All For The Want
by Laryna6
Summary: Lorelei didn't think it was possible for Luke to change the destiny he had forseen. So what if Auldrant wasn't saved? Do you think a being who controlled time would give up that easily? They will keep doing this until they manage to pull off a miracle.
1. What if Asch was less selfish?

Consequences.

Disclaimer: I don't own, the rightful owners including Namco and Bandai do. Please don't sue.

-

"Luke, Luke, wake up!" Tear was shaking him, frantic. "We have to get aboard the Tartarus before we sink into the miasma!"

"Tear?" He felt groggy. "The miasma's still… here?"

Tear wouldn't meet his eyes: Luke didn't notice because his own couldn't focus until he heard a cry for help. They were on an island surrounded by some kind of muck, and a kid was sinking into the muck. The miasma. He forced himself to his feet even though he felt tired, and warm, and tempted to remain in bed for five more minutes instead of following Master Van's training regimen and getting up at five am.

Master Van had been, yes, taking them to destroy the miasma, and then his memory was blank. No, not quite, first there had been one of those headaches, the jerk voice that had made him attack his friends instead of the old and tired voice.

"Tear, let me go! Why aren't you helping him!" He raged at the others, who were there. Except for Master Van.

"We can't do anything for him! We need to get to the Tartarus!" Tear tried to drag him but was nowhere near strong enough: Jade had to lend a hand.

The kid was crying out for help, and Jade and Tear wouldn't let him help them, and Guy and Natalia were just standing there. If Ion hadn't looked mournful Luke would have chewed them out for it, but Ion was a nice guy unlike _some people. _

"We fell into the Quiphoth when the passage ring was destroyed," Tear explained when they were 'safe, for now, but we have to get to Yulia City.' "It's a sea of miasma under the outer lands."

"Passage ring? What happened?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Guy agreed. "You suddenly got a headache again and this time it was you that got attacked instead of us. I had to tackle you to get you to stop trying to cut your own throat. I ended up having to knock you unconscious and then Ion used an arte to do something to your fon slots so it wouldn't happen again for awhile. Van took you and Ion to try and figure out what was going on with your headaches. It has to have something to do with that thing at Choral Castle, you started getting the weird headaches after that." Guy gave Jade a look which Jade ignored. "Anyway, then that red-headed god-general showed up and was berserk. We followed him to someplace where you, Ion and Van were and then he must have thrown a hyperresonance at Van, only it hit some fontech instead. Then all of Akzeriuth started to collapse. Van tried to get Asch the Bloody to come with him, but he fell on his sword instead." What was really weird was that Van had just laughed harder when that happened.

It hadn't been a sadistic laugh, at least, but… Guy couldn't describe it other than with the word 'insane' and he didn't want Vandesdelca to be insane. "Tear used Force Field and here we are."

"Master Van said he would help me use my hyperresonance to destroy the miasma and save the town. The… Asch the Bloody was trying to stop me." Trying hard enough to be willing to kill Luke. "Why would he want all those people to die?" How could anyone?

"Use your hyperresonance to remove the miasma? A theoretical possibility, perhaps, as you possess Lorelei's fonon frequency, but you have no training. Unusually little training, in fact." Although not for a disposable replica.

"Hey! I train all the time!"

"Yeah, it is kind of weird that Van didn't have you learn about fonon fields and stuff." Guy hadn't wanted to criticize, it wasn't his style, but… Luke wasn't slow, actually, not out in the real world. He picked up things fast, and when he was dedicating every spare second to training you'd think he would have oh, passed Guy's level since Guy had other things to do with his time a long time ago.

"With so little training you would have almost certainly been unable to focus the destructive power on the hyperresonance and only the hyperresonance. Bring you someplace with so much delicate machinery? Not to mention that if the miasma was rising from this sea there would be no way to destroy all of it." The sheer scale! "Not without a huge amount of power."

"The sephiroth draw on the power of the planet storm." Oops, Guy shouldn't know that. Or rather, he shouldn't have associated the planet's fon slots with massive fontech. As heir of House Gardios he knew about them, of course, it was his family duty to protect them. And now two were gone, and a very important two if he remembered right.

"Even so, you would need a focus." Jade shook his head.

"And how do you know so much?" Tear challenged, strangely on edge.

"I invented fomicry." Jade hesitated, looking at Luke. "I don't know whether I should tell everyone but you this or if you're the one with the right to decide who else is told." Patient-doctor confidentiality, and he didn't want to destroy Luke's life like that, but… He should have told him before. "In any case, given his comments to Asch, the original Luke fon Fabre, it's clear that Van knew Akzeriuth was going to be destroyed."

"Original?"

Jade kept talking over Luke's protests, deliberately tuning him out. "A replica is created from another thing, in the case of a human that person. Their existence is not accounted for by the Score. It's possible that your Luke was trying to prevent the city's destruction, Natalia." He could throw the girl a bone. "But as Van pointed out, while replicas possess free will the rest of us do not. By preventing Van from using Luke as you surmised, Tear, to destroy the city Asch doomed himself to his own scored fate. After all, if Luke had destroyed the city and killed himself before Asch got there, fulfilling that Score Van was arguing with him about while the rest of you were either in shock," Natalia and Tear "or tending to your employers," Guy and Anise: Ion had been beaten, most likely by Van, most likely for not removing the seal on Luke.

That digression aside, "If Luke had done what Asch was intended to, destroyed the city as Van intended _first_ then Asch wouldn't have been able to. Luke would have substituted for him in the Score, suffered his original's fate. It's clear that Asch was collaborating with Van Grants for years." A pity he was out of Jade's reach. "But creating children to use and murder them? I forbade it myself. Tear, I'm afraid you're not going to be able to kill your brother. Not unless you find him first, at least."

"What are you talking about?" The god-general who was identical to him, had the same style, Master Van's style. Only he'd been trained so much better. The one who had made him throw up, and he'd forgotten as soon as he could because it was too horrible to contemplate.

"You know what he's talking about, dreck," Luke heard from his own lips, and feeling his body controlled again by that same cruel power horrified him enough he didn't notice Jade's own quickly-suppressed horror.

So that was what Van had meant by saying it didn't matter which fulfilled the Score of murder and death. Luke was a perfect isofon, and syncing their fon slots must have made it certain as well as enabling that disgusting puppeting.

One of the reasons for the fomicry research on Hod was Jade's own Big Bang theory. Bring back the doomed, achieve immortality. By transferring into copies of your own body. After all, replicas weren't people, not at all. No reason to feel guilt, they were just substitutes.

Jade was firmly of the opinion that Dr. Jade Balfour should have been drowned at birth, but his medical training and experiments under Professor Nebilim's supervision were going to come in handy. The original purpose might have been to learn how to make patients feel better instead of cause them to suffer the optimal amount of agony, but even if Van's death by torture wouldn't save Luke it would make Jade, for one, feel a certain sense of satisfaction.

-

He wasn't going to be able to do it.

While there was still something of his replica left in here he'd been able to use second-order hyperresonance to magnify his, their power. But the last traces of that dreaming presence had vanished on the way down. Asch has almost been glad, since he'd known they would have to fight Van here and Luke… It wasn't like he would have been aware of what was going on, too far gone already, but Asch would have and knowing what he did now, remembering what he did now…

But there was no way for him to safely lower the lands, do all this with only his power alone. He could feel his control slipping around the edges, hear Guy's curse (muffled so as not to destroy his concentration) as the readouts displayed danger signs, warnings the sephiroth were going to collapse (except this gate and the Radiation Gate, where Van's supporters had gone to survive the catastrophe), and they were going to. He'd failed.

Or he hadn't yet, but he knew he was about to, that he couldn't do this, and once he did that there would be no arable land left and the only recourse would be Van's replica world. Van would have won.

Asch would have killed thousands and failed millions, failed his replica. And a few months ago he would have thought mourning him or giving a damn about it utterly ridiculous. That was before he'd found himself taking over the body of a grieving child, piece by piece, memory by memory, thought by thought until there was nothing left. Hard to say he was only a thing when you were drowned in feelings that were not yours but were equally real.

Van's supporters would allow Natalia to live, probably, in Largo's memory. Guy. Ion, as a replica. Perhaps Anise, for Dist's sake. Jade would have failed Peony and would do the honorable thing, most likely after ensuring that Eldrant would rise and _something _would survive. Asch would quite likely join him, except that Luke had made him promise to live.

Luke… He couldn't hold on to anything, it all slipped away, he turned all he touched to ash and ruin.

The world was in his hands and he could feel it dying.

Hearing Lorelei's voice, receiving the key and being told that Van was alive was a relief, really, although he didn't know if he'd turn to him for comfort as they both had for seven years (although he was the reason they suffered) or kill him.

-

It was done. The last of Lorelei's fonons, the last of the memory particles of Auldrant had been destroyed. "A new world, free of the Score." At last, at last Hod, everything had been worth it, or so the descendant of Yulia thought.

Van didn't notice that behind him Asch was smiling, because while Luke had been unconscious when it happened Asch had been able to recover that memory, the memory of the moment Asch life ended and Luke's death began.

Asch was, after all, Lorelei's perfect, precious isofon, just like Luke was his replica (just as Luke had been a fragment of Lorelei's soul), and he had recognized Lorelei as a warm presence, one that would have overwhelmed if he hadn't grown used to Luke. Lorelei had overwhelmed him, blurred him, when he had tried to speak to him before. Asch had grown strong.

Lorelei had thought that all of its children were doomed, but with Asch's power added to its own, the way Luke's had been added to Asch's until Lorelei's scion perished, there was a way to reclaim that memory, turn back time. But he had to tell him that, "_The arte will take time. Your soul will not survive to return, oh one who shares my voice." _

"I'm living on stolen time," Asch murmured aloud. Keeping a firm division between his words and the other's thought-words and thus between their thoughts and his was one of the techniques Jade had taught both Luke and him to buy them a little more precious time. Asch had found it hard, in the end to not mistake Luke for himself: after all, Lorelei's other self's fonons had come from within the light of the sacred flame, part of his soul and inheritance. It was hard to confuse a world's sentience with a mortal. "And it will be returned." The longer the arte had to work the further back time could be rewound. There was no point sending the world to before replication had started: there were no free-willed individuals to cause deviations then and thus there was no point, no chance that something could happen to change this.

Asch left the celebration as soon as he could, finding it hard to keep from laughing. It was ironic that they celebrated Lorelei's death while it endured, yes, but... "You'll need to pretend to be me." He stared up at the fon belt, not knowing if the urge to escape into it came from Luke's memories of the manor or Lorelei's of the core. Both, Lorelei would have told him if he'd asked. "He has the hymns and the key, he could imprison you again."

"I will not let that happen, for the sake of the people of my world, for the sake of you who shares my voice and the sake of that bright fragment of my soul." It was easy for Lorelei to take control. Although Asch had mastered making switching off as easy on Luke as possible it worried him, because when Asch had started being able to take control this easily Luke had been about half-dead. "I am more aware of my nature than my scion was: to control the fonon is to me what moving an arm is to you. But when time is returned to the time of the Score I will lose my memories of this. It is not written in the Score, therefore the Score will not permit it to exist in the planet's memory."

"Damn it." Asch punched the railing and forced himself to turn away. He'd never sought comfort in staring at it, and while he'd done things out of mourning for Luke (seventh fonists' souls were supposed to go to the fon belt when they died, but did anything remain of Luke? Especially after even the fon belt had been destroyed and remade?) while he was alone in his head he had to hold on to himself now, at least until he could teach Lorelei how to lie convincingly.

Asch'd thought _Luke_ was honest and compassionate to a fault: the kid couldn't lie worth a damn and had wibbled over liger eggs, for crying out loud, let alone human death. And Luke hadn't lived to reach eight. Lorelei had been around since there was an around to be and was rather set in its ways. As a being of truth lies were useful to it, as a being of memory to hurt another was to hurt itself. The Score had been agony and Lorelei had cringed thinking of how the one who would seize glory would be devastated to find that Eldrant would soon never have been. Asch had worn Luke down a bit about trickery before it became painfully obvious there was no point and he should just let him keep what was left of his innocence, but Lorelei didn't know if Asch could teach him enough to keep Vandesdelca from discovering and binding him before Asch was no longer here to advise.

Perhaps if he buried himself in Asch's memories and tried to forget being Lorelei, forget those thousands of years of torment in the core, forget the world as it once was and might never be again?

It was memory, Auldrant's memory, Auldrant's soul, both the world's creator and the world, but in memory of his precious isofons' sacrifices he would be a single individual just long enough.

Long enough to win his other manifestation another chance, although Lorelei still did not know if he could succeed.

"Do you think this has happened before?" Asch wondered.

"Very likely. The Angelic Sacrifice's death and your birth are certain, set in the Score. Thus Hod's suffering is almost certain, the creation of my scion from you, light of the sacred flame, almost certain."

"As long Luke exists then I'll survive Akzeriuth. As long as I exist you'll survive Auldrant's destruction. And none of us will remember how many times we've failed." Asch's thoughts were filled of black admiration of Yulia Jue. "So we won't despair. Is it possible for Van to win or the Score to be carried out? What if he killed me twice?"

"Then this world would be without a sentience and fall apart into chaos. All would cease, not even ash and ruin left, Asch."

"At least you're using names now, although we need to work on the poetry." Asch sighed. "So if Van figured it out and killed me… and if Van were to bind you it wouldn't hold forever."

"Another two thousand years."

"…Van said something about a cycle once."

Lorelei said nothing.

"That as long as the possibility of knowing, of controlling, the future existed mankind would go to war over it, the way the Fonic War started, all this started."

More silence. "We're going to have to work on lying." Asch had somehow found himself on another balcony looking at the fon belt. "But replicas… they wouldn't bind you to a Score. They're… I used to think they were less than we originals, but Luke was purer than I'll ever be and even Sync was a saint compared to his original. But eventually the fonons will separate out again, won't they? First there was you, then the other fonons arose from you, and by the time the Fonic War started there was so little that was you that it took them ages to find out you existed, even though there were legends of Mother Auldrant, things like the Planetary Fonic Arte."

"Nothing like the Score has happened before."

"In your memory. What would happen if this failed? What would happen if you died and there was no vessel?"

"If the Score were to succeed and I were to fall apart into miasma, if Vandesdelca were to erase me and this world did become mindless, then all would return to the void until 'I' or one of my selves, a sentience of the seventh fonon, arose from it."

Lorelei tried to ignore Asch's thoughts, although they were a part of him as all memories were. "And you can't just smite people who try to take control of you?" Asch snorted. "Forget I said that. You're worse than Luke, at least he could kill to protect or in self-defense."

"You did that for him."

"It was paying rent." The least he could do. "Is there any way for Luke and I to survive this?"

"If I were to be freed while Luke's personality remained in existence. However, freeing me requires you to work together."

"Which will probably always be over my dead body."

"If I were, then I could keep you both alive, or if you were dead remove Luke from his body and he could remain as another sentience of the fonon."

"And I would be immortal. And would kill anyone who tried to start another Fonic War, since I'm the human who inherited your power, not another you. I don't feel their pain and I don't care if people like Mohs die." Asch snorted. "What are the odds… No wonder your prediction was absolute. We're so predictable, we humans. We do the same stupid things and the laws of fonology aren't as nice as you. I wonder how many times we've destroyed ourselves? Like that dominos game."

"…I would still prefer to cast the time arte."

"You had better. We'll do this until something goes right. Actually, I mean wrong." Almost impossible as it was. A replica world or a chance for a world that contained Luke, Natalia, and those other people? "If I hadn't killed myself, or if Van were a little less insane… But Hod happened, Akzeriuth will happen as long as I'm alive, and there's no way Luke could bear killing all those people. Can you think of a way?"

"If I had, the Score would have been different in order to prevent it. Yulia wanted my best prediction."

"Luckily you're as much an idiot as Luke." Is, was, would be.

Asch wandered around, giving people the impression he was just being an antisocial snit like always and _not speaking to anyone_ as Lorelei carefully drew glyphs too fine for the human eye to see in the fon belt he ached to return home to.

-

_A/N: This was somewhat born of a friend re-playing the Akzeriuth bit and a conversation about certain people's actions based on both post-facto and event-current denial. A key part, although one that didn't come up in the conversation, was that Asch claimed that he was trying to stop Luke from destroying the city and it was possible to save Akzeriuth because Luke had free will, therefore the city's destruction was all Luke's fault._

_The logic fail there, or part of it, is that Asch was the one scored to destroy the city, _not Luke_, and if Luke had 'listened to Asch' and not destroyed it then Asch, without free will, would have. Which explains why Asch didn't make more than a token attempt to stop him. _

_This what-if is based on Asch making a serious attempt (being less of a hypocrite…) and running headlong into why Van created Luke in the first place. It's interesting that in this case it's him being a better person (to Akzeriuth at least, worse to Luke due to trying to kill the replica) that destroys the world. _

_And time loops FTW. _


	2. What if Van wasn't evil?

I don't know if this is the reboot that came after the previous fic or a hundred timelines later. In any case, this is a 'what if Van hadn't set out to destroy the world' fic where replica!Luke was never made, Tear taught original!Luke the stuff a Yulian was assigned to teach him in the first place, and so on and so forth. The previous universe was 'What if Asch was less of a hypocritical bastard?'

This thing itself actually came out of another fic, where Van was insisting on dwelling on 'could have beens' instead of just getting to the part where he got to strangle someone. Regular him is very much someone who feels revenge is a dish best served cold.

Essentially, for the world to survive, the Score needed to be overthrown. That couldn't happen without replicas, a properly motivated person who met certain criteria and _correct information_. Eldrant was Yulia and Lorelei's, well, not wish but plan. Better than total destruction and Lorelei frankly didn't believe that there was an alternative to Eldrant, so kudos to Luke.

Meaning that, for the sake of preventing the utter annihilation of humanity, Jade's, Van's, and the Original Ion's lives being so Kick The Dog makes nasty sense.

Lorelei _is_ capable of leaving the core if the Grand Fonic Hymn is involved. Combine that with Asch's ability to use Luke's body as a puppet and the Big Bang Effect, and you get this.

Luke may be an Actual Pacifist, Asch is, well, 'The Bloody,' and I tend to see Lorelei splitting the difference at Mama Bear. He really doesn't want to hurt people since they're all his children, and I really don't think saving Van _and _Sync was really just being compelled, but if it's letting them suffer or total annihilation, then they're just going to have to suffer, and if his children are suffering because of him then he'll suffer along with them.

Lorelei is quite willing to possess & fatally people in the process, inflict terrible pain on Luke (he's probably more willing to do that to Luke than he would be to random people, since Luke is himself, but even so), and that's on top of the entire freaking Score.

In fact, since the Score was originally composed as a way to save Auldrant and buy it as much time as possible, Lorelei's niceness is probably why there's so little leeway and chance of survival at the end: he already used up every trick he could think of and spare ounce of power he had buying those two thousand years instead of just creating Eldrant right then, so you end up with a bit of a Cold Equations scenario: there's not a lot of fuel to spare because there were other rescue missions that needed that fuel.

There's this sense of _exhaustion_ that permeates every encounter with Lorelei and is why he can do so little to help them, that he's just run himself ragged for so long that he's not running on much but willpower by then, and that only goes so far.

-

Heedless of the Fon Master's condition, the prince ordered that they keep moving. What was even more disconcerting was that the other Order member present, God-general Mystearica the Banshee, didn't raise any objections but merely soldiered ahead.

Jade helped Anise place Ion onto her fontech doll, frowning. The god-general might be one of Mohs' fraction, yes, but before this she had shown some consideration for the life of the Fon Master, if only because there was no heir.

A prince of Kimlasca ordering Order members about. A prince of Kimlasca who the Score referred to with such a… grandiose title.

Jade had studied under former god-general Nebilim the Golden. He knew his ancient Ispanian very well, thank you.

The implications of all of this were very, very chilling. Not to mention the air the others had, as though there was some secret that they were all privy to except him. And Anise, who seemed equally in the dark.

The prince was almost gloating. The princess seemed even more proud of him than normal. The Fon Master was almost unreadable, but perhaps there was a slight air of regret. When the god-general's eyes looked around the group she seemed to almost skip over him, as though he, Malkuth's ambassador, wasn't worthy of notice. They also seemed to linger on the prince, her student, in a way that seemed almost like veneration. Veneration, from Yulia's heir?

And Guy, when he wasn't playing the dumb blond servant, was staring at the prince's back as though he was cursing the fact he couldn't run a sword through it just yet in an even more pronounced way than normal.

Jade had his suspicions about that, as he did about everything else, but if his _other _suspicions were correct than the last thing he wanted to do was damage the cover of the person most likely to succeed in killing the prince.

Jade's spear arm was aching, the instincts and feelings he normally was too monstrous to register screaming at him to kill the prince himself. That would ensure war, however.

Yet if war was certain whatever he did now?

As he hesitated, the clock ticked and the prince strode ahead. The whole thing felt scripted, as though they were being herded towards some great moment. A moment described in Yulia's own score, not just the Planet Score. No mere evacuation would rate _that_.

Odd that a shot ringing out could _decrease_ the tension.

God-general Legretta the Quick started to say something about Mystearica's brother, dying wishes and 'how could you, after what he suffered,' but the prince ordered her out of his way as Mystearica attacked with her knives, clearly trying to shut her up.

Jade wasn't going to get involved in that, especially since he was fairly certain what side he should be on, and noted how even though Legretta's words were full of venom towards the sister of her recently-deceased husband, the one she was targeting wasn't her, even though the practical thing was to take out the healer first.

No, the one she was almost desperately trying to kill, ignoring her own wounds, was the prince.

Given how everything seemed to revolve around him, perhaps his arrogant attitude was justified.

A god-general of the Order, and they didn't even pause to bury her. The Order insisted on their dignity, and no one raised any objection to a maestro's body being kicked out of the way of their advance.

Guy didn't seem surprised at all by this. Angry, but unsurprised. The Fon Master was the only one who seemed to mourn her passing, but no one cared for the feelings of the one who should be the most powerful person in the world. By this point, Anise seemed as certain as he was that something was very, very wrong.

When they reached the city, Luke's first priority wasn't to help the wounded but to give a speech. Malkuth had failed Akzeriuth, so Kimlasca would now reclaim it. There really wasn't anything he could say to that, especially surrounded by Oracle Knights.

It had been a given that he would do that. The Colonel waited for the other shoe to drop as the Oracle Knights were instructed by the god-general to gave aid only to those willing to swear loyalty to the Kimlascan throne. Under the circumstances, he wasn't going to blame anyone: the adults here had been born Kimlascan, after all.

"Kneel before your prince!" Not his prince, thank you. "Kneel before the heir of the power of Lorelei!" _Now _he only avoided being knocked down by someone trying to force him to his knees because he had anticipated the blow and moved first. He needed to know this, his pride didn't matter next to Peony's well-being.

Hyperresonance, the ultimate destructive force, in the hands of a mortal. In the hands of someone who intended to make war on Malkuth. Jade didn't need to watch him 'miraculously' cure miasma poisoning to verify that was what it was. He might not be able to affect the seventh fonon, but he could certainly see it. It was half composed of particles he could affect, after all.

All very mythic, this entire scene. Jade doubted the prince would be _quite _so powerful if they weren't almost on top of one of the major planetary fon slots. It was enough to impress the non-scientifically-trained commoners. And the Order, who _did _know what they were talking about.

"The Score shall bring this world prosperity!" Yulia's heir, who had identified herself as such to the growing crowd, declared. "To be an enemy of the Scion of Lorelei is to be an enemy of the Score! To oppose him is to oppose the Score, to be an enemy of the entire world! Their deaths will come swiftly, as it is written!"

That would put the fear of god into Malkuth's soldiers. It was certainly scaring _him_, and he had only been afraid exactly once in his entire life.

He hadn't allowed it to show or affect his reasoning then, either.

Well, well, well. Clearing the city of miasma would be quite a feat, if he could pull it off. If he had that kind of precision, well. Forget merely destroying Grand Chokmah and St. Binah the way Hod had been destroyed. He could kill all their inhabitants with ease, and preserve the valuable real estate.

He allowed himself to be prodded along (clearly they were set on humiliating him, and through him the empire) to bear witness. Luke was smirking at him, the horrible little brat. He hadn't liked how Jade had merely raised an eyebrow when he'd tried to lord it over him. Natalia would be smirking if she weren't too busy holding her nose in the air. She'd been equally affronted on behalf of her betrothed.

Kimlasca's royals were just as poisonous as the legitimate members of Peony's family had been. And Aslan wondered how the emperor's right-hand man could be an anarchist at heart. Humans were beasts, and civilization only allowed the most beastly to float to the top. He might have dissected harmless monsters as a child, but at least he'd been honest about it.

They were being led into the city, trying to get as close as possible to the planetary fon slot. He'd suspected as much: hopefully he wouldn't be able to do something as impressive as this would clearly be without a major fon slot nearby. Grand Chokmah was almost as far as it was possible to be from any of them.

Daathic and Yulian seals? If the glares hadn't warned him he was in no position to ask questions he would have. And what was with all this fontech?

Guy seemed to recognize it, whatever it was. Curiously, his usual anger seemed to have receded. There was still a hint of viciousness there, but the impatience had been replaced by anticipation. Was this the moment he had bided his time until?

Jade tried to keep track of him without being too obvious about it. If Guy attacked, he would do everything he could to assist.

Such power. They must be at the very center of the fon slot!

And the prince seemed to have difficulty controlling it. The same way the researchers at Hod had trouble controlling the weaponized-hyperresonance fontech.

Reshaping matter was difficult under the best of circumstances. Trying to make himself into a seventh fonist had claimed the life of Jade's teacher.

A pity that with all these guards waiting outside there was no chance to make a run for it. Not that he'd be able to run fast enough to avoid being caught in the blast.

Their escort had left them behind, most likely so there were as few witnesses as possible to the prince's struggle to control the power. Jade was a necessary evil (he played that role often, didn't he?), since they needed to prove to him that the prince really was doing all this on his own.

Jade registered the moment the power went out of control an instant before the god-general, who began to gather fonons but made no move to help her student as the shockwave destroyed the core of the fontech and the ground began to shake beneath them.

"Luke!" The princess rushed forward to catch him as Guy hung back, looking at Mystearica.

Who began to sing. Nightmare he recognized, as he did force field, but they blended seamlessly into each other and were followed with yet more.

"What's going on?" he dared demand of Guy while the others were distracted.

"There he shall turn power to calamity, destroying the city _and himself_." The rest of the Score?

"What? Luke as well?!" Natalia demanded as Luke convulsed.

"What?" Guy spread his hands, looking innocent. "Hey, don't blame me, it's the Score. The Butcher destroyed Hod, and now his son's destroyed Nezach. The Albertesque seal has fallen."

Which meant nothing to anyone except Mystearica, who continued to sing, and Ion, who hung his head, not meeting Anise's eyes as she looked to him for an explanation.

Their fall abruptly stopped as the hymn finished and Jade's eyes widened. He thought they'd been engulfed in fonons before!

Then they flowed into the prince's body.

Mysterica spoke finally, now that the arte was complete. "The one who shall inherit the power of Lorelei, the Scion of Lorelei, has fulfilled his destiny. As Lorelei appeared to my ancestor to save Auldrant, now Lorelei has been freed from the seals that imprisoned him in the core, supporting the Sephiroth and the Score."

It wasn't something that you could just eyeball, even with his eyes. He couldn't be certain without more precise equipment. But this _sound_. He'd done research on the seventh fonon. He knew its frequency. "A perfect isofon?" Yes, that would explain how he'd wielded the power of Lorelei, the power of perfect hyperresonance. "The contamination effect!"

"You catch on quick." Guy grinned. "Shame you're not a seventh fonist."

"Natalia…"

"Don't talk, Luke, I'll protect you." Natalia squeezed his hand before turning towards them. "Traitors!"

"Well, yeah, if we'd ever been on your side to begin with." Guy drew his sword, and Jade was finally able to get a good enough look at it to confirm that it was indeed the Jewel of House Gardios. "You were both going to make the Butcher look like a saint. You both disgust me." He _moved, _and then his sword was back in its sheath as Natalia went flying off the edge of the platform.

"She wasn't scored to die yet." Not that Mystearica, another survivor of Hod, seemed to care.

"You heard what she said about the Score of Grand Chokmah. Scum like her uncle and cousin." Gailardia shrugged. "How long is this going to take, anyway? I need to wash this filth off my blade."

"Not much longer, or he would be trying to kill you for that."

Jade knew what he was seeing, but he still didn't want to believe it.

He took his glasses off. No, it still looked the same.

Perhaps if the body were destroyed before the process was complete?

No, that wouldn't halt the Big Bang Effect either. Why did he have to be right all the time? A little self-delusion would be useful right now.

Fact: the prince had perfect hyperresonance.

Fact: the prince must therefore either have a split personality or Lorelei's fonon frequency.

All available evidence supported the second hypothesis.

Fact: something catastrophic was occurring with the planetary fon slots and, according to these two, a seal on Lorelei or some such thing.

Fact: with perfect isofons, the senior personality was capable of taking over the body of the other, and in theory remote-controlling it although he was only ninety percent or so certain that that one was humanly possible, especially for extended periods of time.

For Lorelei, however?

Fact: the flow of fonons into the prince was being controlled, and definitely not by Luke himself. The style of fonists was as individual as a fingerprint. The prince was arrogant and utterly ham-handed. This flow had perfect economy of movement and effect.

Perfect control. Over the seventh fonon.

The heirs of Yulia and House Gardios were kneeling. Fon Master Ion appeared mesmerized.

The prince opened his eyes. They had been green before. They weren't any more.

Jade was one of the most powerful fonists of the past thousand years, if he did say so himself. He was not used to the feeling that an opponent could crush him like a small insect. He really did pity those who had been forced to face him on the field of battle, he really did. So this was what it was like to be so terribly outclassed.

So it was a relief to see some regret in those red-gold eyes. "So you truly believe that there is no other way?"

"Another way? This was what you and Yulia intended." Mystearica seemed to only understand a little more of what Lorelei was talking about than he did. "Now that you have been reborn, you can lead us to the promised land of Eldrant."

"Two thousand years ago, I could not find a way to save this world either. Yulia was the one to find a path that would grant it more time. If you, Daughter of Yulia, do not see an alternative to bringing about the glorious world, then there truly is no hope for this one." Those eyes closed as the sentience sighed, seeming to mourn. Then they opened, hard and focused, and he could see the resemblance to the prince. "Little groundwork has been laid, and with my attention divided between this form and maintaining the Sephiroth, there is little time to convert the Sephiroth from raising this world to generating the new one."

"Well, if it's fontech… and you've got Sheridan and Belkend, since they'll think you're still the prince," Gailardia pointed out.

"There are Sephiroth in Malkuth as well, and since the Emperor of Heaven and the One Who Would Seize Glory did not choose to dedicate themselves to bringing about the Glorious World, I do not have enough knowledge of fomicry, the arte that allows humans to reshape creation, to redesign the sephiroth and make this possible. Forgive me, Gailardia: the fall of your land was necessary to ensure its development."

"Don't you already know everything? Why did you need it to be invented?" Why?

"I only have the knowledge that the fonon possesses. I can't know something that no one has ever figured out how to do, even if it is possible. The minds of those who are not seventh fonists are closed to me as well." Now he looked at Jade, and Jade wished that he believed backing away would accomplish anything. "Like the Heavenly Emperor."

If he hadn't been so smart he wouldn't have figured out what that meant so fast. One of the many times he wished he hadn't been born so intelligent.

He would have killed himself, but this was the sentience of the fonon that enabled resurrection. It wouldn't have done any good.

Introduction of the seventh fonon, if it did not cause an explosion, eventually turned a non-seventh-fonist into a mindless monster. However, unlike Jade, Lorelei knew what it was doing.

Meaning he only had a second to inwardly panic before there was no mind left too panic.

"There should be a way to make it self-sustaining without my governing it." Lorelei frowned. "I shall need to lower half the Sephiroth, there won't be enough power otherwise."

"He or Vandesdelca was supposed to invent it?"

"Hopefully he still can." Memories shaped personality and controlled actions. A curse slot was nothing next to what Lorelei could do, even though he disliked it.

He didn't like any of this. But it was this or all of his children would die and their souls would be lost as well, decayed into madness and eternally trapped in the miasma.

Normal people's bodies were determined by their genes and their memories were kept in the cells of their brains. Seventh fonists relied on the fonon. Although what Jade had termed 'replica data' was the key to successfully making a transition, if it wasn't handled perfectly the body would reshape itself randomly and the mind would be unable to access any of its own thoughts or memories.

Lorelei could handle it perfectly. He'd made the first seventh fonists, after all. The difficulty was figuring out how much information, information that Jade would need in order to figure out a way to accomplish this in time, he could give him without driving him mad. He also needed Jade to cooperate.

A clouded mind couldn't produce genius, and genius was what Jade had been born to have and cultivated to produce, even though he had turned away from it.

He didn't care if Jade hated him. He deserved that. What mattered was ensuring that something would survive.

He had not suffered two thousand years in the core, he had not stood by and watched his children be tortured, he had not _ensured that that torture would happen_ by engraving it in his own memory only to fail now.

"There has to be another way," Jade said a moment after there was a him to say it.

Once he realized what he said, he knew that Lorelei must have made him too human by mistake. Normally he would never have said something so delusional. Has to? There was no 'has to.' The universe worked the way it worked. Feelings did not come into it.

Mystearica sighed. That was what her brother had insisted.

"There is not much time left to think of something before the situation becomes irreversible, Heavenly Emperor."

"You're the sentience of time, how could that possibly…" be true, Jade would have finished, if he hadn't suddenly known all the reasons that it was. "Well." That was a knotty little problem. "To start with, I'm going to need a duplicate of my old lab." Surely Lorelei could arrange that. "Lieutenant Saphir." Someone who came up with idiot theories that you could rip to shreds while getting your own thoughts together was very helpful when brainstorming. "And a few thousand people that no one will miss very much."

"The Tartarus, under your lieutenant's command, has cleared the pass and is nearly here. He brought along the entire contents of both your labs for purposes of treating the miasma poisoning. As for the third…" The inhabitants of Akzeriuth were in the same position as the people of Hod.

Something not in the Score, a possibility among hundreds, perhaps even thousands, and Lorelei had still set things up two thousand years ago so that it all came together so neatly. If he had a hat he would have had to tip it to Lorelei. "You _are _good."


	3. What if Jade was?

Again, the more one reviews Jade's, Van's, and Fon Master Ion's lives, the more they seem designed to turn them against the Score. And it's also pretty amazing, the positive impact Van and Luke had on so many people's lives. Guy's redemption's the obvious one, but once I start thinking about what Tear's life would have been like if Van hadn't been so determined to shelter her as much as he could and been in a position to do so... From what Legretta says in the quest where you see their training and from what we find out about how the other kids treated Tear in Yulia City, her childhood would have been hell and she wouldn't have been so completly ignorant of what the Score and Order actually were. He really did his best to protect her, which just goes to show that yes, he had it in him to be the father Luke wanted and it was utterly unfair that no one ever tried to protect him.

This is another timeline piece.

In the last universe, there simply wasn't enough replication research done ahead of time to guarantee perfect isofons, let alone mass quantities of them. Probably the optimal Eldrant scenario would be where everyone's personalities could just be transferred, not so much Auldrant dying as it being reborn, a dying, dissolving world transformed into a healthy one.

Even with Jade's assistance, the situation would end up very much like Van's plan in game, and as the first timeline pointed out that isn't acceptable to Lorelei. Meaning if that timeline occurred there would be another rewind, another attempt.

No, for there to be a chance at Eldrant really being the promised land, replication research would have to not just start early but continue, without being outlawed, abandoned, and forced underground by its greatest genius.

I believe I've said that I've wanted to kill every single character except Luke and Ion, the ones that are too good for that world. I need to amend that to Luke, Ion, and Peony. Peony is not only made of pure win and is Auldrant's token good-person-who-isn't-a-replica, he also gives you what my friend refers to as the costume with the best effect in the game on second playthrough.

…which reminds me to do the Auntie Tear fic. And, for crying out loud, I set out to write one AU! One! For heaven's sake, muse, stop thinking about might-have-beens! Do you want to strangle him or not?

Also, Peony's middle name, Upala, continues the gem (and false-gold) naming theme of the Keterburg people. Precious/honorable gem. While Gelda Nebilim's name, on the other hand, between 'gilded' and what the Nephilim actually got up to, basically screams Evil Mentor and Villian With Good Publicity. Nephilim _were_ teachers, it was just that the stuff they taught ranged from causing loss of innocence to outright evil.

Auldrant _would_ have dragons instead of dinosaurs in its prehistory (it's that sort of planet), and what do they hoard?

Also, is it fair to have the main characters for this be listed as Asch and Luke when in universe 2 Luke was never born and Asch died quickly? Not to mention this one. Why is there no Lorelei character listing?

-

"Yes, Peony is going to be rather cross with me when he finds out, I'm afraid." Le sigh. "All that effort he made to stamp out the research into fomicry his father backed, and his best friend arranges another Hod right under his nose. His own fault for trusting a man he knew very well was a monster, really." Nephry _had_ warned him. "You're quite right, Tear: the 'treatments' are absolutely useless against miasma poisoning. In fact, the loss of replica data will weaken their bodies and haste their deaths. As for you, Luke, I _did_ tell you that you had every reason to hate me." He looked at Guy next and merely smiled before turning back to Tear. "Such a pity about your homeland. But," he spread his hands helplessly. "Some sacrifices have to be made for the good of the world."

Guy had been forced to learn restraint, living in the home of his mortal enemies, having to take orders from The Butcher himself. That was why his hand only rested on the hilt of his sword instead of drawing it. Really, now was not the time to be deliberately provoking people, but it was just so much fun.

"You'd better not," the Fon Master Guardian Arietta warned him.

"It was permissible while we were allies, but drawing a weapon in the fon master's presence is punishable by death, after all," Ion agreed, stepping to Jade's side. He smiled his trademark serene smile for a moment… before it was replaced by the smirk they had seen rarely. Mohs had deserved it, but it was hard to forget seeing the light of cruelty in the eyes of someone who normally seemed so saintly. "Arietta?"

"Drop them, now, or I'll feed you to my pets."

Tear dropped her staff right away, feigning fear. No one was fooled. "_And _the knives," Arietta said.

Grimacing, Tear obeyed. Luke looked to Guy helplessly. "Do what she says, Luke." They were outnumbered, between Arietta's companions and the Oracle Knights that practically infested the city. He let his own sword drop to the ground. Natalia had already been relieved of her bow and tied up: there wasn't anything they could do to keep Largo from carrying her off after a nod of permission from the officer of Malkuth.

"You're working with my brother, aren't you?" Tear demanded.

Jade leaned back in the chair like an old man preparing to reminisce. "Yes. In fact I have been since, oh, around when you were conceived. A long time ago, when dragons ruled the earth and I was a young man with some shreds of belief in human decency, I joined the military and was posted to Hod, to assist in the fomicry research there. At the time, I found it all very appalling, what they were doing to those poor people. The excuse for essentially torturing citizens of Malkuth to death that they gave us was even more appalling." Tsk.

"…What?" The hell was Jade talking about? Guy's father would never have allowed something like that!

"Exactly. What. What did it matter what we did to them, when they were about to die anyway? They seemed to think that I would have no objections to this. It was simply practical, no, even noble to make their deaths mean something. Except that we weren't told that _Kimlasca _was going to destroy Hod, oh no. Fon Master Evenos made Kimlasca take the blame for that as part of the peace settlement. The true culprit… was the true victim. The Score predicted that the power of the one who would seize glory would destroy Hod."

Luke had no idea what that meant. Tear's eyes narrowed and Guy's jaw dropped.

"Oh, yes. So, they reserved their cruelest experiments for the boy, or rather performed them on him first. Made him the target of all the hate. Tried to study his powers in order to produce a hyperresonance weapon, and when he refused to call on them, they plugged him into a feedback-producing fon machine and beat him until he was too disoriented and pained to refuse. Even a monster like myself considered that needlessly cruel. And do you know what he told me when I asked what his family had to say about all this?" He shook his head. "I was soon disabused of the notion that it was possible to rescue him."

A boy not even ten years old, starved and bloody, begging him not to. Because they would hold Jade's family hostage, destroy everything he'd ever touched if that was what it took to draw him out and recover Vandesdelca. Jade hadn't understood why everyone else paid so much heed to the Order, growing up. If Professor Nebilim had chosen to leave it, then it must be worthy of such dismissal.

He had been a fool. "They would not have suffered Hod to survive. And, in the end, when he fought and refused to destroy it on the appropriate date, they plugged him into that machine again, as he knew they would. They threatened his sister to ensure he didn't kill himself, they threatened his one friend in the entire world as well." You, Gailardia, and you _didn't realize a thing_ as all this was going on. "And while his parents despised him, they would never have forgiven him for harming a hair on the head of their unborn daughter, their 'real' child."

As they digested this, he turned to Luke. "Your Master Van was used to destroy Hod, with the assistance of his own kin. Just as your so-called family sent you here to die."

"Master… Van?" They did that to him? How could they?!

Jade reflected on the world. Luke was a good child, underneath it all. Good enough that when informed of something like that, his first concern was for his beloved father-figure. And the world was an evil place. Evil enough that the second part didn't really seem to surprise Luke at all.

"Yes. The Score decreed Hod's destruction, just as it decrees Akzeriuth's. Your father and uncle sent you here so that your power would go out of control, destroy the city, and give them an excuse to attack Malkuth. To begin a war that would only end when Grand Chokmah was buried in corpses and the throne was stained with the blood of its last emperor. They would have done their best to eliminate all the survivors, trying to prevent Kimlasca's own score of destruction.

"The plague that would have been caused by so many unburied bodies would have spread to their kingdom as well, an act of vengeance by one of those who survived." By virtue of being in Daath at the time and sending one of his Barrelows to obtain samples instead of allowing himself to be exposed to the plague.

"But only after Kimlasca had glutted itself on its conquest, enjoying unprecedented peace and prosperity. What do the lives of over a million citizens of Malkuth matter next to that?" Or the life of a single child of their own family.

Luke knew that part well. "And I'm just an embarrassment. Is that why Malkuth kidnapped me? To try to prevent that?"

Jade really wondered where Luke had gotten the idea that he was slow. Well, Natalia, most likely, wanting him to suddenly remember everything a ten-year-old knew. "Imagine, Luke, a child not even your age reading all that on the seventh fonstone. And no, I had 'Luke fon Fabre' kidnapped for an entirely different reason." That reminded him. His memory really was going in his old age.

Checking his timepiece, he stood up. "Well, come along, children. This is a rare opportunity to see history in the making."

"What are you going to do to Luke?!" Jade wasn't at all impressed, especially since Oracle Knights were ready and waiting to restrain Guy when he lunged forward like that.

"Really, for the supposed-son of your mortal enemy you're very attached to him. Perhaps Van let something slip."

Van had been hinting that it was unfair to blame Luke, but, "Supposed-son?"

"I find it's better to show than tell. I do hate explaining things, but shall I tell you a little more about hyperresonance? It reshapes matter on the most basic level. Wounds caused by hyperresonance cannot be healed, and it's said that the power of Lorelei is even capable of destroying the souls of seventh fonists, since Lorelei created them in the first place. Now that fomicry has been perfected, thanks to my humble efforts, it's not rare for a Kimlascan noble or member of the order to commission the creation of a perfect isofon.

"The very same immortality that Malkuth's Imperial Family funded Hod's research in order to achieve, but sadly, they perished before that came to pass and it was not until Fon Master Ion," he nodded to him, "became ill and the Order, at Van's suggestion, funded more research in order to save his life that Dist and I were able to pull it off."

The procession wound through the mines and Jade walked on, heedless of the miasma. It wasn't what would kill him. "Someone with a perfect isofon has no need to fear death. Should they die, their fonons will fall into the new body, drawn to it instead of the fon belt. The only thing that could possibly prevent the Big Bang Effect is if they were killed by hyperresonance. Your father and uncle have multiple spares in Belkend, Luke, and your mother has already used up two of hers. A perfect replica has her illness as well, and being out and about as she has been these past few years is rather taxing on even a brand new body. Natalia has one as well, and yet they never extracted your data. Grand Maestro Mohs forbade it specifically. It would have been an attempt to avert 'your' Score, after all, and your death and the casus belli it would provide was the entire point."

Still no real surprise on Luke's part. He was easy to read, having never mastered deception. It wasn't as though they had needed to groom him to rule, after all. Guy had concealed his true thoughts for years, and Tear, although lime-green behind the ears, was in intelligence, so they kept quiet and listened, waiting for an opening, as they reached the entrance to the Sephiroth. "If you would do the honors, Fon Master?"

"Of course." He stepped forward to undo the seal.

"This is one of the Sephiroth, the trees that hold up the Outer Lands… Oh, yes, two of you already know all this and Luke doesn't really have the background. In brief, if this is destroyed Akzeriuth will fall, just like Hod did. This is what Luke fon Fabre was meant to destroy. Another significant piece of information is the reason replicas are not considered real people. It is because, unlike humans, the Score takes no notice of them. They have no fates or lives of their own and do not deserve to exist in this world, when they might endanger the 'prosperity' the Score promises. An original, a 'real' person, will be compelled to carry out their Scored fate no matter how hard they fight it. A replica has free will. Ah, what kept you?"

"He'll be along shortly."

"I don't know why you even tried to delay him."

Van's shrug conveyed his regret: he'd known this was coming but Asch was still his student. He hadn't been able to even try to save himself: perhaps it had been liberating to at least try to prevent this.

"Master Van!" Jade gestured for the Oracle Knights to allow Luke to rush to his teacher's side. How happy he was when Van patted him on the head! How reassuring the presence of the only one who truly cared for him was!

Really, Jade quite preferred replicas to originals. They were simple and easy to figure out, a refreshing breath of innocence in this corrupt world. So, naturally, the world did its best to torture it out of them.

Van smiled down at him, but didn't try to reassure Luke that it would be alright. One way or another, one of them would die here, and Van had a soft spot for children, like Ion and Mystearica.

Jade interrupted their little moment. The sweetness of it couldn't possibly be good for the body of such a frail old man. "Well, perfect timing, really. We might need you to undo the Yulian Seal."

"Don't you damph! Rrgh!" Tear's voice was muffled by a Oracle Knight's arm, and she struggled to get free.

"Now, now, no biting, or I'll have to have you gagged as well. In fact, that might be a good idea, even though you aren't capable of using the Grand Fonic Hymn." He waved at her. "See to it."

"Yes sir." The partner of the Oracle Knight holding Tear saluted.

"Around two minutes left until the Scored hour," Ion said as they entered the passage ring. "Arietta, do you have any nut clusters?"

"Of course, Ion!"

"Very soon now, Akzeriuth will be destroyed by the power of the Scion of Lorelei and I will be able to determine whether or not death by hyperresonance can truly prevent the Big Bang. Pass those here, will you?" Snacking while waiting for disaster? The idea had a certain poetic appeal.

"Master Van…" Luke clutched at his teacher's arm, face white. The little thing hated the idea of killing anyone.

Jade's own willingness to take lives was a sign of his true nature. If anything, replicas were far more humane than any human.

"Don't worry, Luke. I promise that you will never have to take a life again." Either Asch would take over his body or Vandesdelca Musto Fende would protect the Scion of Lorelei, the heart of the Glorious World that was to come.

So they waited.

It was a brief wait.

Asch's face was twisted with bloody rage, barely recognizable as Luke's. "Dreck! I told you not to come here!" His rage stripped him of control as Van hurriedly cast Force Field.

While Luke's accidental hyperresonance, even raised in defense of his teacher, had merely sent the enemy away, Asch's was infused with the desire to kill.

He didn't even have a moment to despair before he was engulfed in the cloud of fonons he had called. The shockwave damaged the Sephiroth, of course, and when the dust cleared it was clear Asch had gone with it.

"Luke, do you feel anything strange?" Jade asked with his best doctor air.

Luke clearly felt panic and thought Jade was crazy for thinking that any part of this wasn't strange.

"A sensation akin to fonons falling into you through your fon slots."

Luke had no idea what Jade was talking about and attempted to hide behind Master Van.

"Perfect, that will make everything _so _much easier." While a few would be allowed to live on in the new world, keeping undesirables who would follow the Score even with the freedom granted by a replica body out was important. As long as the originals were killed before the replicas were made he had no need to worry, and as long as their originals were killed by Eldrant's expansion then there was no need to worry about the replicas of the nobility, either.

Peony would never forgive him for allowing his people to be destroyed, but his people had been doomed regardless of what Jade did, so really, Peony should be happy that at least their replicas would live on.

Peony wouldn't take his own life to atone, not with them to look after.

Jade might or might not. On the one hand, he had much to atone for, on the other he was worried that if he did young Vandesdelca might follow him.

None of this was the boy's fault.

No, the fault rested with two people and one group. The Father of Fomicry, the Mother of Auldrant, and the masses who enforced the Score, merrily torturing others for the sake of their own welfare without realizing that it would be their own turn soon enough.

Yes, very soon now.

He'd have to take one of Arietta's pets to Grand Chokmah after helping Vandesdelca program the Sephiroth. Peony's bodyguards wouldn't let Oracle Knights carry him off to safety, but they would believe Jade if he said he had an urgent message for the Emperor. It would be simple enough to drug him and make use of those infernal tunnels to get him out of the palace.

Peony was a kind soul, even to people such as himself. Far, far too trusting. Almost replica-like in his purity: no wonder his people adored him.

And this world would have destroyed him just as callously as it did replicas. No, the new world would be far more suited to him.

Jade doubted Peony would agree, but being saved against his will would be entirely his own fault, after all. Peony had only himself to blame for the consequences of befriending someone like Jade.

He had it on good authority (Arietta) that if he were a monster, he would be a dragon, and he'd be just as poor a dragon as he was a human if he allowed Peony to die. Friends _were_ treasures, after all.


	4. What if Tear hadn't gone into denial?

_Everyone's behavior after Akzeriuth is really infuriating, but the worst, in my opinion, was Tear._

_Often the 'official' pairings, especially in video games, leave me cold. There tends to be too much 'because destiny/the author said so,' and not enough 'they're good for each other.' _

_I really thought Luke & Tear were going to be an exception. I thought that they would be able to lean on each other after Akzeriuth to overcome their issues with Van and their respective families. I thought that they would be good for each other. The scene on the ferry where she apologized to him, which no one had ever done before, really made me very impressed with her. They were going to be absolutely adorable. I really thought that they would be the first time a canon het pairing of the main characters in a video game was my OTP. Sadly, that has still not happened (although there is a canonish het OT3 in Grandia II: Tenchi solution FTW!)_

_During the rush to prevent Azkeriuth as well, Tear correctly assigned the blame. Said that it was her brother's plot and that Luke needed rescuing and so on. _

_And then, the instant Akzeriuth falls, all her character development disappears and is never recovered. It's like she becomes a totally different person, with the complete opposite of the traits that made me like the early game's Tear so much._

_While the others face their issues, the closest she comes to character development in the rest of the game is being able to cry with someone else in the room. A character with such wonderful potential to, no, who had already become a caring person who could accept Luke for who he was is utterly ruined. They turn her from someone willing to accept other's handicaps into the kind of person who pushes others down to make herself (an utter greenhorn with no life experience either) feel better. She takes her issues out on Luke, she blames him so that she doesn't have to blame Van when before she was very able to accept and handle the fact that her beloved brother had become a villain. They take a character with the rare courage needed to face life squarely, in a very real sense the most mature member of the cast since she's able to admit her own faults and try to make up for them, and make her into a hypocritical weakling who can't even face her own emotions._

_I don't think that I have _ever_ been so disappointed by how canon handled a character. I _liked _Tear, and they turned her into a type of person I utterly despise. _

_Hence, this AU is 'what if Tear I loved in the early game hadn't been replaced by a pod person while Luke was out cold?'_

* * *

"Don't look." Tear hugged Luke to her chest. "Don't look." Behind her, the child cried out as he was sucked into the mud, and she knew that Luke could feel her shudder.

This was all her fault. She'd known her brother was up to something, something terrible, and she'd let herself be _distracted_. Those oracle knights had probably been under his command, the story about the Seventh Fonstone had been a lie, he'd played her like a lute, and now…

"Get to the Tartarus!" Jade snapped, and Tear took a deep breath. She was a soldier, she had to act like one.

"Come on," she said gently, coaxingly, tugging Luke to help him stand up. And to make him turn around.

She didn't know if the boy was above the miasma and she didn't want Luke to see.

"What… Aren't you going to help him?"

"There's nothing anyone can do, Luke." It was too late now. She'd failed to stop her brother from becoming a murderer ten thousand times over. "Come on, let's get on board, okay?" She had to push him along, keep him from turning his head. He didn't quite struggle, but she thought he would have if it hadn't been her, if she hadn't kept her grip firm enough that he knew there would be a fight if he tried to break loose.

He didn't want to hurt her. He hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. He'd been such an… ignorant, well-meaning, _child_, and she'd made him feel _obligated_ to kill without having any _idea_.

"But…"

"Luke, I don't want you to die too!" She tried to snap that out like an order, but it ended up more of a plea.

Please, Lorelei, let this not be happening! Let her brother not have killed all those people, not her brother who had sung her to sleep and protected her from the bullies as best he could and taught her to cook and, and…

He'd gone _mad _and she hadn't stopped him and now everyone would remember her beloved brother as a terrible murderer. How could this be true?

But it was. She'd wanted to deny the truth when she'd heard him talking to Legretta, but now she really couldn't hide from it.

"I don't want you to die too," she repeated, trying not to shake. She didn't want anyone else to die because of her brother.

"Tear…" Luke said, confused, but her push him along.

Guy, Natalia, and Anise looked at them, shell-shocked and not knowing what to think. Guy made an abortive movement to take Luke from her once they were inside the Tartarus, but drew back when she met his eyes and let him know that she wasn't moving. Jade's face was unreadable as always but Ion looked guilty.

For a moment she thought that he should feel guilty, if he hadn't unlocked the Daathic Seals… but no, Ion was sick, even if he'd resisted her brother would have been able to force him easily. Anise should have been there to protect him. That was her job.

Just as it was Guy's job to protect Luke, and Natalia should have kept an eye on her fiancée – or was he? – and the uncomfortable silence grew.

No one wanted to meet anyone else's eyes. No one wanted this to be happening. No one wanted to believe that this was their own fault, that those people had died because of their negligence.

Except Tear.

She hugged Luke like a stuffed animal, like Mieu, and it was for her comfort as much as his. "What did he…" She didn't want to know, but she was a soldier, she had to ask. "What did he do?"

"Master Van, he said that I could get rid of the miasma, and then he'd make them let me come with him to Daath, and," they could have been like family, Luke and Master Van and Master Van's sister. "I tried, but I couldn't, and he, he said…" Shouldn't Luke be crying by now, Tear wondered? Not just gulping and having a hard time breathing.

Or had he learned not to cry, the way she had? Grandfather had kept saying that if she didn't react to their taunts they would go away, and she'd really tried, and she'd really tried to make friends but they always laughed at the dirty outerlander, and she'd tried not to cry so her big brother wouldn't see that she was hurt and get in trouble for beating them up again.

She closed her eyes, and it was a hard knot inside, that old pain. This was just more to add to it, but this was her brother. This was Van. The one person in the world who had always believed in her and never hurt her. The one she'd…

Just like Luke.

"I'll, uh…" Guy made his escape.

Jade examined his fingernails "I'd plot a course, if there was anywhere to go."

"Yulia City. It's to the west," Tear said, mainly to get him out of the room.

Anise and Natalia followed in their wake, Natalia looking back guiltily and Anise dragging Ion along.

"I'm, this is all my fault, isn't it?" Why did it sound like Luke was pleading for her to say that it _was_?

Because he didn't want Vandesdelca to be a monster either.

Not her brother. Not his teacher.

"I want to blame myself, too. If only I hadn't just left like that."

"But you had to investigate the fonstone."

She smiled. It was just like Luke, trying to defend her like that, even though he was so different now from how he normally was.

Just like she was so different when she wasn't trying to be the perfect soldier, a little sister Van could be proud of and a strong girl no one would dare pick on. Luke's arrogance had made her think that… but that wasn't the truth, now was it. He wasn't like them.

"It's not your fault," she told him sadly. "I knew I had to kill him, and I let him get away with it. I failed."

"I failed! I was supposed to save all those people! If I had been strong enough, then…"

"Then he still would have killed them!" How could he? "I don't know what happened to him," she confessed. "He was always so kind, and…" And Asch, and all that implied.

For seven years he'd been pretending to be her good-hearted brother. For seven years he'd kept the real Luke fon Fabre hidden away while this Luke, her Luke, and Natalia suffered.

She, she…

If only she could hate him. If only they could.

* * *

Tear scowled, furious that the others were doing nothing as Asch attacked Luke. Between the two of them, it didn't take long for him to be defeated, which really said a lot. He was a god-general, she hadn't seen actual combat until she'd attacked Fabre Manor, same as Luke. Asch had been using strike artes for years, had killed dozens of people, and he was taken down by two green warriors, one of whom was caught between channeling his anger at Asch and curling up into a guilt-ridden ball?

They'd both grown a lot stronger during their journey together, but unlike the other god-generals they'd faced, who (she knew now) had been holding back for one reason or another, Asch was really, genuinely trying to not just kill but _hurt _Luke.

Hadn't he been hurt enough?

* * *

"No, you can't."

"I can't what?"

Luke was terrible at playing innocent. "You can't go. You can't do this to me. I don't want you to die!"

"But Asch is stronger, and…"

"Who says that? Van? You know healing artes and Asch doesn't! You have far more of the seventh fonon in you than he does! Don't ever say that you're weaker than him ever again!" Her eyes stung. "He's not more important to you, or better than you, and it's not your fault he abandoned Natalia!"

Luke flinched, and Tear had to swallow and try to calm down. "It's not your fault, Luke. None of it is. This is Asch's decision: he wants to do this. He wants to save this world so Natalia can be happy." It was the first unselfish thing he'd done, really. "If you take this away from him, he won't thank you. He'll never forgive you." And Luke wanted to be forgiven by him. Luke couldn't stand being hated or feeling like he'd hurt someone else.

"But he's more stable since he's an original –"

"Which one of you is dying? And no, it's not your fault! If he's going to die anyway, than I don't want you to die too! I don't want you to die, Luke! Not you too!" Not one more victim of Van, not when she'd lost her brother twice over now and needed to lose him a third time.

In the end, she had to use the first fonic hymn to keep him from going to the Tower of Rem.

Then Luke began to act strange, as though he was keeping something from her.

Asch never did forgive Luke for depriving him of his heroic sacrifice.

* * *

_Even if Tear hadn't been enough of the 'good kind of selfish' to keep Luke from trying to kill himself, I kind of do think that Tear being a good person would put the good ending out of reach. In canon, Luke ended up loving the world without being loved in return, not the kind of love a child needs, anyway. It was a sacrifice, and a dogged perseverance, done without hope of reward, just because. Luke got put in several hellish situations, and while being beaten and burned did make him a death seeker and so on, it also forced him to develop the kind of strength it takes to sacrifice himself and only feel happiness. _

_The martyrdom of a god is a fairly powerful thing in the tradition Luke's birthday and several other things allude to. Although Lorelei made the original sacrifice by allowing himself to be bound, two thousand years ago, Luke's manages to avert Armageddon/the Book of Revelation. Instead of the virtuous living on in the Glorious eternal city and everyone else, or just plain everyone, getting… Well. _

_I'm also a fan of Legacy of Kain, and what Luke pulls off really is the coin landing on its edge. There were two options: the outer lands fall, everyone dies (after massacres, plagues, etc.) & the outer lands fall, humanity continues in the form of replicas on Eldrant. "Suppose you throw a coin enough times. Perhaps, one day, it lands on its edge," in action is kind of the premise of this fic._

_There's a translation into English of Ar Tonelico 2's Exec Viena that's worth listening to, although Replekia is just incredible and doubly so when you know what they're saying. _


	5. What if Van knew Lorelei would return?

Hearkening back to the previous chapters – the reason they were able to try it again in the first one was that Van wasn't aware of the Contamination Effect and didn't realize that Asch/Luke/whoever would ultimately end up being taken over by Lorelei the instant he destroyed Auldrant.

The timeline in the second chapter ended up rebooting even though there was no Luke or anyone to make a stand and say yes, it really is possible to save this world. Or that it was worth trying to save, at least. Exhausted or not (and Luke got very very sick of trying to do the impossible too), Luke is still Luke, and he was nice even though only Ion was able to see his niceness for what it was. Lorelei, as he says point-blank, _is _Luke. Replica!Luke, not the original, I mean. Definition of a fonon sentience.

So even though Eldrant would have guaranteed the survival of _something_, at least, he still ended up deciding to try to have an ending where everybody lived even without any moral support. Not that Luke really had much in the way of moral support in canon, so perhaps it's still fundamentally the same situation… I mean, his 'friends' were: six people who all proved during the game that they were willing to betray him, their families, and even the ones they loved the most; Auldrant's other token decent human being who ended up dying because of it and _Jade_. The more times I play this thing the more I wonder if people other than Van were deliberately trying to convince the walking reusable strategic nuke that the world should be destroyed. On the other hand, there's the maxim, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Is too dumb to live really that much better, though?

In the third timeline, Lorelei's failsafe didn't come into play. The reboot happened for the same reason as in the first timeline: because Van/Van&Jade killed basically everybody and Lorelei wanted to give them a chance to survive. In timeline two, there was less deliberate destruction but they weren't able to nail perfect isofon technology, so prettymuch everyone _still_ died.

Here…

…is the piece that has been in my documents folder entitled The Vanfic I've Been Trying to Get Done for ages.

* * *

The Contamination Effect.

From the very beginning, the Necromancer's attempt to revive his teacher, it had been the entire point of replication. Well, brainwashed slaves and soldiers were useful things, and the backup bodies would obviously have to make themselves useful to earn their keep until their owners died, but the Score already did a good enough job of making sure the lower classes didn't have a choice in the matter.

No, immortality was the real prize. The reason the members of the imperial family, save for a certain bastard offspring, were among the first to have their replica data taken, even though the process was untested. After all, what did it matter if your body died if there was an empty vessel waiting to receive it?

Except that they weren't able to make a perfect isofon in time to save either them or the Fon Master. That had been Fon Master Ion's hope, and Van's as well, that his ally (perhaps even friend) would be able to live. But no: while they'd managed to create four stable replicas none of them were exact matches, so when he died his fonons were drawn to the fon belt instead of into any of them.

The replica Luke was the first perfect isofon ever made of a human, although the replication of objects had already been perfected. There also had been animal tests that revealed that after the original was butchered, before too long the replica would suddenly have the training it had gotten, but that wasn't quite proof of the transfer of a mind, a soul.

To be truthful, Van hadn't been expecting a perfect isofon. He'd planned to have a duplicate of the machine that had driven his own powers out of control built near Akzeriuth's core and use that to have the replica fulfill the Score. The first stable replica of Luke, the first one that didn't vanish before even being fully formed, was also the first human perfect isofon ever? Having his power, the power of Lorelei?

It smacked of fate, of the Score and Lorelei's scheming. It was all the proof he needed, although Dist was able to intercept Jade's report to Peony on the cheagle. Upon its death, the original had merged with the body of the replica, erased its personality, and gained its memories. Dist was insufferably gleeful for days at this proof that his Professor could be restored.

However, Jade's own books indicated that it would not work if the original died before the replica's construction (or after the replica died unless there was another one made in time) and there had been no replacement body ready and waiting for Professor Nebilim. That was why Van had planned to eliminate humanity _before_ Eldrant's rise. Perfect isofons were the most stable, but he'd wanted to ensure that none of Auldrant's inhabitants could escape their well-deserved fate and contaminate the new world. As it was, he was limited to replicating the already-dead, or at least those he knew would die shortly, killed by the damage Sync had done while extracting their data.

With one sadly-necessary exception.

It was Auldrant's Scored fate to eventually collapse entirely into miasma. If any trace of it survived to contaminate Eldrant, or if Eldrant was anything less than perfectly stable, then the Score could not possibly be avoided.

Eldrant had to be a perfect isofon. There was no way around it. A perfect isofon of Auldrant made entirely of seventh fonons.

Vandesdelca Musto Fende was the heir of Yulia. He'd read her journals. He knew the definition of a fonon sentience. Dist was surprised that Audrant's fonon frequency, the sum total of all the other fonons and memory particles, was exactly equal to pi, the frequency of the seventh fonon. Van was not.

The Order had buried what history it could, claimed that even its holy scriptures were mere myths and legends. Only her descendants (only him, now) knew that Eldrant had been Yulia's only hope for humanity's survival all along. Only a few of the Order's highest members knew the ancient name of Lorelei. A mere maestro like former god-general Nebilim the Golden would never have been told if it weren't vital to her research on the Planetary Fonic Arte. The research that would lead to her Scored death and hence to fomicry.

The entity that had split itself apart to create the world, the sentience of the space-time in which it existed.

Mother Auldrant. The Singing World and its creator.

Most of the Order, most of Auldrant, worshipped Yulia, the creator of the Score, more than Lorelei. To Mohs' fraction, to those who _knew_, it was a holy crusade to preserve the Score, not merely an action to bring about prosperity. Mohs still believed Lorelei wished only good things for the world. His seniors, those who had stood against the Fon Master when that was suicide, had known Auldrant's fate and not cared, for that was the will of their god. They had believed that would lend them strength.

Fools.

The Score was Lorelei's memory. Its ending meant that Lorelei's death would soon come. And at the very beginning of the seventh fonstone, of the downfall of Auldrant, was born 'the one who will inherit the power of Lorelei.'

Lorelei's perfect isofon. And what was a perfect isofon? A _replacement body_.

While Malkuth's nobility tried to create slaves that would double as replacement bodies for themselves upon an island doomed to destruction, Lorelei had placed his own replacement body at the very heart of Kimlasca's nobility, with Yulia's heir, the one who would destroy Hod and the Empire's hopes, as his teacher and guard.

And soon, Kimlasca would wipe out Malkuth, leaving 'Luke fon Fabre,' the Light of the Sacred Flame, as the ruler of the world. And Fon Fabre could also be translated as _the maker of fonons_.

Lorelei seemed very fond of significant names. His own, for example.

Let the rest of them think that Luke would die at Akzeriuth. No, Van had read the seventh fonstone. The Light of the Sacred Flame, the Scion (a word that meant offshoot, branch, a _part of something_), was spoken of many, many times after that. It wasn't the body that would be destroyed along with the Nezach sephiroth. It was the _mind._ The _person_ that had been born in ND 2000 would die there, as an uncontrolled power surge disrupted the entire Sephiroth system and it had to empty its emergency power supply to compensate and keep the other lands aloft. That power supply? A mass of seventh fonons in the core. Lorelei's current manifestation.

Lorelei had set it up so that he would be able to ensure its own survival. Ensure that the deviations spread and it gained not only a replacement manifestation but a replacement world.

Eldrant. The glorious world.

Vandesdelca. The one who would seize glory. The one who would ensure Eldrant's rise.

In order to prevent that, Van had needed to hurry to reprogram the Sephiroth and ensure Binah's fall so that the energy demand would be lowered and that safeguard wouldn't be triggered.

So no, he wasn't surprised that Lorelei had allowed the creation of another perfect backup body. He wasn't surprised to find that Gailardia's heart, and his sister's, had been won over by it. Both their families existed to serve Lorelei, after all.

He wasn't surprised when Lorelei allowed him to capture it and draw on its power in order to become stronger. Lorelei might have given its isofons means of protecting themselves, but its true goal was still Eldrant, meaning it had to ensure Van's survival so that he could create Eldrant. And if Van drained the power of Lorelei's current manifestation and killed it, all the better.

The one deviation from his plans had been his defeat at the Absorption Gate. The one gamble Van had made had been throwing himself into the core.

But, just like the Score, Lorelei was quite capable of ensuring that deviations did not affect its master plan.

If the deviations replicas caused had spread fast enough and Malkuth's nobility had gained control of replication and Vandesdelca's powers, they would have created the new world to ensure their own survival. That had failed.

Vandesdelca had been motivated by Hod's suffering to bring about Eldrant. That would, he hoped, only be a partial success. Life would survive. Lorelei would not.

If Van hadn't seen the potential of replicas and had followed the Score's path for him, then Luke would have gone to Akzeriuth and Lorelei would have walked away from it, able to handle matters personally as it had before it was trapped in the core.

But Luke, Asch, was his creature now, as much as Van let him think otherwise. As far as he could determine, they hadn't even removed the trigger words he'd placed within the replica's mind, even after seeing the proof of their presence. All he would have to do was say, "Foolish replica Luke," and it would destroy itself and its surroundings.

No one seemed to have realized that he'd done that to the replica in a single unguarded, unwatched moment on the ferry, much less that he'd had Asch to himself for seven years. The power of Lorelei was too dangerous to allow to run around uncontrolled, after all.

Asch was no danger to him whatsoever. There was no reason not to indulge the child by letting him dream of freedom, letting him have some time with Largo's daughter before the end. If Asch were to make a last request that would be it if he had any sense.

Because Asch was doomed. And that was the entire reason that Van had taken control of him instead of destroying him years ago to prevent Lorelei from taking control of him.

No. Let Lorelei have a true body for the first time in two thousand years. Let him take physical form. Let that much of the Score come true.

Just destroying a ball of rock wasn't enough. No, he wanted to kill Lorelei with his own two hands.

Which was why, as soon as Eldrant rose, despite the power it gave him, he fed the fonons trapped within his body into the replication machines.

Then all there was left to do was wait. Wait for Asch and Luke to come to him, and discover which was no longer his student.

He hoped that Lorelei would take over Asch first and the replica didn't get itself killed. That way, he could kill it twice.

* * *

He was tending to Yulia's memorial when he heard booted feet approach. The replica soldiers all had the same tread, and whoever it was didn't move with the quickness of Sync or Legretta.

He turned, holding cut selenias, to see Asch enter. Or no. Not Asch. "Why are you here?"

"In this body, I am not free of the score. This is the day when this child dies." Lorelei walked past him to touch the memorial. "He would rather die by your hand than the blades of replicas."

"Asch is still in there?"

"The process takes time."

"You could have destroyed his mind when you moved into that body."

"I could have," Lorelei agreed.

"Why prolong his suffering? Ah. Today is the day he dies, not the day I destroyed the fonons you inhabited."

"Yes. It would have been more merciful to kill him, perhaps. Still, he deserved some small choice."

"I don't want to kill him, I want to kill _you_."

"It is his last wish." Lorelei's voice was neutral.

"Have you given them to every one of your victims?" Van grabbed Asch's… Lorelei's shoulder, spun him around and threw him to the ground. "Spare me your hypocrisy."

Lorelei's eyes closed, quiet and accepting of death. Like all of the Score's other cattle. Van drew his sword and stabbed down, furious.

His sword buried itself deep in the soil next to Lorelei's head. "Look at me, damn you!"

Even with his eyes open, obedient, Lorelei still seemed distant. Beyond his reach, even though he saw Van. "You speak as though I am not already damned." Joking, now? Although it was a poor excuse for one, spoken with no humor to it, only a black resignation.

"Would you even fight back if you could?"

"No." There it was again, that joyless smile, a despair so great it came out as laughter, like a flame so hot it felt cold to the touch. "Neither of us wants to fight you."

Asch fought everything, all he had was rage, but he was Van's creature, in the end. "You don't want to harm me? You have already."

"Yes. I harmed you, child of Yulia, and I didn't want to." Those eyes closed again. "I will not fight you."

Van slapped him. "Look at me!"

There was no mark, not on the sentience of healing itself. "I have been watching you for two thousand years, Vandesdelca. I am memory. Yours, everyone's. Every moment, every word, every blow. I know just as well as you do that you deserve to have my head."

"And what will you do then?"

"Then, the barrier between Luke and I will disappear. He will know everything of what happened to you. And he will not be able to fight you, either. He loves you too much." Now, Luke could fight for everyone, but he would not be able to push those memories away. He would drown in their vividness, trapped, screaming every scream that his beloved creator had. "Then this world will die and you will have your wish. You will be able to look out at a new world as you die, and die free."

Van could hear the truth in all of those words, the same as he heard it in the Score, and this time it was his fist that struck the flowers next to that head. "How dare you! How dare you imply that this is some sacrifice for me, some justice, when Eldrant was your and Yulia's plan all along! _How dare you_." His hands gripped that throat, and he trembled with the strength it took not to strangle, not to dig in his fingers until red marks marred that perfection, not to snap that neck. Not to give Lorelei what it wanted. "I won't. I won't give you what you want. I'll defy your last prediction, even if it will make no difference in the end." It never did. "_You _are still bound to come to my aid when I sing. Asch will live awhile longer."

* * *

Van did not wait for them alone at the top of the stairs.

"Asch?" Natalia was shocked. What did this mean, that he wasn't fighting Van?

The only answer was a raised sword, pointed at Luke.

"Me?" Luke said, not entirely surprised that Asch would forget about the world, forget everything to be able to kill him in front of Van. "Asch, I don't want to fight you. You can have the jewel."

He held it out, and instead of walking closer to take it, Asch gestured and it floated over to him, meeting with the sword in midair and merging into the key. It fell into his grasp and he returned to that ready position.

"Asch?" No words, no insults?

Luke wasn't the only one to think that Asch wasn't acting like himself. Too calm, too composed. Too sad, behind the mask.

Jade might not be a seventh fonist, but he still had fonic sight. Something did not look right, but there was no time for that now. "Be careful!" He still warned. "This may be another replica." That would be the simplest explanation.

"Another…" Luke's devastated eyes looked up to where Van stood, at the other end of the platform. Looking smug, somehow, as though he knew something he didn't. Looking down at them all. "Master Van…" He raised his sword. "I'm sorry," he told the replica. So, so sorry.

The battle began, at some unspoken signal, and Tear was the first to discover that her artes wouldn't activate, before she was cut down. "Second-order hyperresonance," was Jade's guess, as he scrambled back from that sword. This wasn't a programmed replica, their style was too flexible. That spoke of experience. "Tear! The grand fonic hymn, now!" Perhaps they could still take back the Key, it was their only chance.

"This is Lorelei?" Anise gasped, before a strike went deep into the gears of her Tokunaga.

Despite the sounds of battle, despite Tear's singing, they still heard Van's chuckle.

And he began to sing as well.

* * *

Luke fell to his knees when the battle was over, as Lorelei wordlessly closed the eyes of his dead friends before putting a hand on his shoulder. He would have apologized, but he could not speak.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." It had been a hundred times worse than what Asch had done. At least Tear had been able to dodge that time. At least it had worn off.

They'd meant to use the Key and Grand Fonic Hymn to free Lorelei. That was the combination that had bound Lorelei, two millennia ago.

It hadn't occurred to any of them that it could bind him. Luke had recognized the sickening feeling of doing things he didn't want to: at least he'd managed to yell, to warn them?

The hand made it impossible to hold the tears back, somehow, and he clung to Lorelei's legs. Was this how Lorelei had felt all this time?

Lorelei closed his eyes and bowed his head, caressing Luke's gently, sharing his mourning.

"Master Van…" Was all Luke could get out through the sobs, because that was all that mattered. Why would Master Van do this to him? Why kill them all, why, why?

The ancient knew, but wouldn't have told the child even if he could.

Now that Van had control of the power free of the Score, he could create another body for Asch, keep him and Lorelei from dying on schedule. He could do what he wished to Lorelei.

It would give him a reason to live while longer.

It would give Lorelei time to cast the grand restoration arte, to go back to the birth of the child whose body he had stolen. If he chose to cast it.

Was this not a happy ending? Wasn't it what Yulia had planned? Wasn't the survival of a new world far better than the deaths of everything, with nothing born in their place?

But since Luke had been bound, while he was weak and vulnerable, before the old Score had been destroyed, this world would never be free. Better to let Vandesdelca enjoy his triumph than let it turn to ashes. He was free of the world's memory now. He could feel now, instead of the sensations of his body being lost in the storm of two thousand years' agonies.

He could comfort these children as best he could, with a simple embrace and with screams, until it was time to return to the end of the world. Time to try again to save that world, and give these children a happy ending.


	6. If Luke paid attention to the voices

_Gah! I like to use the present tense for certain POVs with a lot of second-by-second emotional drama, to get inside people's heads, and as I write this I'm forcing myself to convert it to past, since I need to get out of that habit, and it's being really annoying. I also really need to write scenes as they are happening, showing not telling, like the Guy POV in the middle here. It just flowed so well as pissed-off-Guy thinking, but I should have written him actually experienceing that as it happened._

_I said that I was going to go back to updating on Friday/Saturdays and focus on getting unfinished fics, as opposed to oneshot collections, done, but this happened and with the schedule I couldn't have posted it for 2.5 weeks, so I was whatever, midweek gift._

_Just to remind you all, _All For The Want _is a collection of bad endings. Which is why I need to stop asking my usual beta to look at them for me, since she hates those._

* * *

"What if Luke had paid attention to the voices in his head?"

Afterwards, the first thing Luke did was apologize to Tear frantically, asking if she was alright even though she was never hit. When she reassured him that she was fine, he smiled wanly and said that was a relief, and it was, but the smile quickly disappeared as he raised his hands, just looking at them.

There was a terrified emptiness in his eyes, and maybe his hands were trembling slightly. Natalia couldn't be sure. No: his eyes weren't empty: Luke was terrible at hiding his emotions. He was looking at his hands as though pleading for something not to be true, but already knowing that his wishes didn't matter. That wasn't a poker face but a child's desperate need.

Later, looking back, she could see that Luke was about to break and knew it, but for some reason at the time she just wanted to forget what had just happened. No, she knows why she did that, in hindsight.

Perhaps he was staring at his hands hoping that they could catch some of the shards of his dream as it shattered around him. Perhaps he was staring at his hands knowing that at any moment they could be taken away from him again.

The last time Luke looked like this was after they saw that god-general, and since more than his hands were beginning to tremble, it was no wonder that Guy shook his shoulder and forced him to snap out of it and move along. It wouldn't be good for Luke's reputation for him to throw up again: the fact there were witnesses to him attacking Tear like that is already bad enough.

Since his father put him under house arrest in the manor, rumors have spread that Luke was mentally incompetent. That he'd been driven mad by his kidnapping.

When he looked like that, Natalia could believe them. That her Luke was gone, dead, and all that was left was this broken thing. No, she'd known that when Luke had been returned to them, but she'd always waited for him, waited for him to snap out of it, pull himself back together.

She's been working on him for seven years, and it was a slap in the face to see that he was still broken after all this time. All her work. That his bratty façade was nothing but a brave front, put up for her and his mother. That what she dismissed as inconsiderate lazyness was the best he could do for them, when she needed so much more.

She needed her future husband to be _responsible_.

So why couldn't she admit that he was?

When Luke knocked on her door in the inn later, his hair was wet. He was scrubbed a little too clean, and somehow she could tell that it wasn't just because they had all been desperate for a hot bath, after the desert and its sand getting everywhere. No scent lingered on him, but somehow she could tell that he'd thrown up again. Perhaps it was the fact there was no color to his cheeks, despite the heat of the sun that still hadn't set. Instead of reddening his skin, the colors of the setting sun, so like his hair, merely showed how deathly pale he was by contrast.

Natalia had thought of how romantic it would be to watch the sunset together. Chesedonia had marvelous sunsets because of the sand. Still, she'd known as she'd heard Luke's reply to her, "Who is it?" that he wouldn't have come for that. Not this awkward Luke who didn't have a romantic bone in him, unlike the one who had made the promise with her.

After he let himself in he just stood there, hands clenched tight enough that his well-scrubbed knuckles were as white as his face. "Natalia, I can't go to Akzeriuth."

She'd let shock and worry turn to anger. It was far easier. "What? But the Score! And what about your little plan with General Grants?"

"Don't you think I know that?" It was as close as Luke had come to shouting at her in quite some time, but as soon as she registered the passion that was so rarely seen in the amnesiac Luke it flickered out. "Natalia, I can't. That wasn't the first time this has happened. I've been hearing voices since Master Van brought me back to the manor."

"What?" Hearing voices? Suddenly, the fact that they'd kept him confined made sense. By the time he'd learned enough that he could have faked recovery in public, they must have known that he wasn't mentally competent.

"It's the headaches. I try to ignore them, but they don't go away, and now there are two voices, and one of them's evil. It's angry, so angry all the time, and if it can make me attack Tear, who knows what else it will do? And it's not just that voice. The other one, too. It took control on the ferry to Chesedonia, and if Master Van hadn't stopped me… It made me summon a hyperresonance, I might have killed _everyone_."

"Luke…" Her heart ached for him. "Why didn't you tell me?" Bearing this alone, all these years? He hadn't just been fighting to recover his memories and failing, he'd been fighting a descent into madness caused by the trauma of the kidnapping?

"Father and Uncle ordered me not to, and I didn't want you to worry. I told Mother that I stopped hearing them years ago, but… I asked Jade."

Normally Natalia would have scolded him for telling an officer of Malkuth that Kimlasca's future King was insane, but under the circumstances? Oh, Luke would have tried to hide it, but Luke couldn't hide anything from anyone, let alone Jade.

"This isn't something that goes away. And some of the things that are part of this are just going to get worse as I get older. The voice never took control of my body before, and I never did what it told me to do," he'd known better than to listen to voices in his head, "but I couldn't stop it. It's happened twice now, so close together, and… I have to go back. Mother's doctor prescribed powders, they didn't work and just made me feel muzzy, but I can't let Tear or anyone else be hurt because of me."

Tear, Natalia noted. Tear.

He mentioned Tear, not her.

Perhaps it was just that Tear was the one who had been attacked this time?

No, she'd known better, even then.

"Luke," she'd said, after moments of silence, trying to think of something to say. "You're an ambassador, you can't just go back, it would be an embarrassment to Kimlasca. Can't you just hold out until we get back?" And he could be confined in the manor again.

Luke shook his head. "It'll just be more of an embarrassment if I lose control again and kill people in Akzeriuth. We can't risk it, Natalia."

He'd already made enough of a scene today.

"You're right," she admitted, and tried not to think of Luke locked up in that room like a madman.

Which he was.

Which he had been ever since he'd been brought back, hadn't he. Amnesia? Amnesia didn't make people forget how to walk and talk, she'd known that. Something had made him regress, something had driven him insane, and she was never going to get her Luke back, was she? Just this broken shell of the man she had once loved.

"So you need to help Master Van save Akzeriuth."

"Hmm?" She'd looked at him in surprise.

"That was what I was talking about with Master Van, remember?" His happiness at the thought seemed to make him forget how angry he'd been at her eavesdropping and blackmail. "He said that I could use my hyperresonance to get rid of the miasma and save those people. That's why I wanted to hurry, so we could get there before they got poisoned any more." Jade had told them horror stories about miasma poisoning, after Tear's force field had let them get through it on their journey. "I can summon a hyperresonance by myself, but normally a hyperresonance is two seventh fonists, right? So you can help Master Van, and that way it's still the Kimlascan ambassador doing it, so hopefully the war won't happen and no more people will have to die."

Actually, Luke would have asked Tear, since she was a much better seventh fonist, except she was kind of crazy when it came to Master Van. Ion was also a lot more reliable than Natalia, but he was sick. Luke had kind of wanted to wait until after Akzeriuth to save him because that way not only would the people there have less time to get poisoned and die but Ion wouldn't have to breathe in the miasma. It couldn't be good for him.

"I can't go with Master Van," Luke went on. "What if I hurt him? And if I hurt his sister, how could I face him afterwards?" He looked down at his boots. "I won't be a very good student anymore, but at least he'll come visit me." Master Van had never cared that Luke was clumsy because he was learning to walk or his head was foggy because of the powders. "So I asked Guy to take me back." Normally Luke would have just gone and assumed that Guy would follow, but he couldn't put Guy into danger without warning him. "He promised he'd knock me out at the first sign of a headache."

"You've really thought this through, haven't you." How unlike him. No, she knew that was unfair. It was noble of him, to try to keep himself from being a danger to others or an embarrassment to Kimlasca. "As your fiancée, I should be with you in your time of need." …Could she still marry a madman? "But the mission does come first." That was her responsibility as a princess.

Luke nodded. "Say sorry to Master Van for me?"

"I'll give him your apologies and inform him of the situation." She'd also hurry home as soon as she could herself. Luke would need his family and friends with him in a time like this.

He would have to be confined to the mansion for the rest of his life, unless by some miracle there was a cure that hadn't been tried. Surely he knew that. Surely Duke Fabre had forced Belkend's labs to look into it. Unless he'd been too afraid the information would leak.

"Thanks, Natalia." She was surprised Luke was saying thank you to her so sincerely, but it had almost been like he was saying his goodbyes. Like he'd known somehow. "We're leaving in the morning, after I say goodbye to Ion." Who was already asleep.

* * *

Had they told him what it was?

Had Luke drunk knowing what it was or had they just given it to him?

Like drowning an unwanted puppy.

Luke might have known. The news had come of Akzeriuth, that Natalia, Van and ten thousand more were dead (just like Hod), and Mohs had told him that it was all his fault for not obeying his Score, not being there.

Luke had tried to smile all the way back, even thanking Guy for hitting him with the flat of his sword to knock him out when one of the voices spent half a day trying to talk to him, but he had only been a shadow of the Luke Guy knew. He'd been like a man going to his execution.

Had it been a literal execution?

Falling on his sword would have been more traditional, but poison made for a prettier corpse. They wouldn't have wanted to make this any harder on Lady Suzanne than it had to be.

He'd stood there in the throne room as Ingobert yelled at Luke, furious over the death of his daughter, and Mohs seized the opportunity to give a sermon on the Score and the evils of disregarding it. He'd watched Luke shrink, curl in on himself, and then they'd sent Guy to his quarters and Luke to a room somewhere. He hadn't even been able to get close enough to Luke to pat him on the shoulder and tell him it would be ok.

He would have been lying. An hour later he'd overheard that Luke was dead without a mark on him.

Everyone in the servant's quarters knew it was poison. And none of them had done anything about it!

He hadn't been there for him. He hadn't been there with him. Luke had died alone and despairing. Perhaps he'd even welcomed the peace of death, compared to causing so many deaths.

It wasn't what Luke would have wanted, but even in death he would be causing a few more.

Guy had dreamed of slaughtering them all with his sword, like the rest of his family, but poison had just as much poetic justice to it now. He had to thank Duke Fabre for forcing Luke to stop following Pere around, learning about pants and fawwurz. There had been limits to what Pere could grow when they'd had to worry about an inquisitive twelve-year-old toddler sticking things in his mouth.

Deadly poisonous things.

* * *

Natalia, Natalia! He was going to kill that goddamn replica! Goddamn dreck, because of it, Natalia, Natalia, she…

It had _told _Natalia to do it! Do the thing that it had been meant to do! It should have been the one to die in his place, not Natalia, never Natalia!

Asch's knuckles were bloody, but even that pain wasn't enough to center him. He punched the metal deck of Yulia City again, and again, screaming at it in his mind, trying to find it, to torture it, to make it suffer.

"Natalia!"

* * *

"My congratulations on your ascension, your majesty." Jade bowed.

He laughed. "Lines of succession are a funny thing, aren't they."

"Emperor Peony would most certainly agree." No one had expected Jade's invention of fomicry to end with the bastard inheriting.

How ironic that this monarch had also come to the throne because of Jade's crimes.

King Gailardia's smile was the same as Guy's, but now the hidden venom that Jade had detected (one monster knew another, after all) was much nearer the surface as the former manservant looked down at Asch.

Daring him to say something.

They all knew that Guy had come to the throne thanks to the assassination of practically all Kimlasca's high nobility and military high command, after which a secret organization of Hodite refugees had joined him and General Pere in the castle. After centuries of alliance marriages, the Duke of Hod's claim to the throne of Kimlasca was one of the better ones. Not to mention that at this point he was unquestionably the rightful Duke of Belkend, on his mother's side.

Except Asch.

Jade was only nobility by adoption, and he could tell that the two of them were playing 'you know I know you know' as they stared each other down. Or rather Asch was trying to stare Gailardia down and Gailardia was just leaning back and smiling, in a very Peony way, because they both knew Gailardia had already won.

After revealing the former ruler's treachery in destroying a city that had formerly been Kimlasca's (many of Baticul's citizens had family there), sacrificing their beloved princess and poisoning her fiancée so he couldn't speak the truth, Gailardia had the support of the people of Baticul, and the fact he was a handsome young man with a tragic past certainly wasn't hurting.

Possession was nine tenths of the law, especially in politics.

Asch couldn't even claim the moral high ground. Calling Gailardia an assassin? The _Special Operations God-General _calling someone an assassin? Pot calling kettle.

Asch had given up his identity as Luke: he would have to prove his identity, and how could he, after the very public and tragic state funeral of Luke and Natalia? Luke's body had been put on display, but the people had only an empty coffin to remind them of their lost princess, who couldn't even be buried beside her love. The mausoleum was practically drowned in flowers.

Unless Asch tried to assassinate Gailardia, it came down to 'you and what army.'

Politics always did, in the end, although Jade had grown quite a bit jaded.

Van had cut Asch off from all outside resources quite skillfully. After leaving him, Asch couldn't even command his own troops. Gailardia had Hod's surviving forces (the Empire, knowing what was coming, had ordered most of Hod's army onto the continent even as The Butcher took their home islands), and barring a miracle Kimlasca's army would follow him over Asch.

It was Guy who broke the stalemate by turning his gaze away dismissively. "As we all know," his majesty said, "Luke wanted war between the kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear and the Malkuth Empire to be avoided. It could even be considered my friend's final wish." Last request.

Jade smiled, as if to say, "How marvelous," even though they could all hear the, "but…" coming.

Except Ion. "That's what Luke would have wanted," he agreed, clearly relieved. Luke had hated people being killed.

Jade was surprised. Shouldn't one young deceiver recognize another? They'd both pretended to be mild as milk, and they'd both cared a great deal for the replica Luke.

Ah, yes. Replica. He kept forgetting that Ion was younger than he appeared. He acted artificial in many ways, certainly not like a normal person with normal emotions, but then neither had Jade at that age.

"Right," Gailardia agreed. "Come to think of it, when_ did_ Luke ever get what he wanted. Jade. The Necromancer."

Jade mimed surprise. Did Gailardia mean him?

"One of my liegemen told me some rather disturbing information about Hod. Kimlasca's archives confirmed it. As did the interrogations of a few order personnel, and the Score."

Tear knew what that meant. A monarch from the outer lands forcing Scorers to tell the truth? No one had dared that in centuries! Guy would be killed now, by Asch or someone else.

She'd lost too many people.

Jade closed his eyes. "Peony had nothing to do with any of the crimes against Hod's citizens. That's why he's still alive instead of dead like the rest of his family, of replica data extraction."

"He's the Emperor of Malkuth." Fault or not, it was his responsibility.

"He knows that. He would beg your forgiveness, given the opportunity. But it was not his fault. It was mine."

Guy's fist slammed down onto the throne's armrest. "He will beg my forgiveness at the foot of his throne, Necromancer. And then he can beg it of the dead!" He stood, looming over them thanks to the dais. "First Vandesdelca is used to destroy Hod, and now Akzeriuth? My family was entrusted by Yulia herself with the protection of the Albertesque seals and her descendants, and now I find that the second was tortured into submission and used to destroy the first? The Order has betrayed Yulia and Lorelei, just like their founder! Mystearica." He addressed her, eyes softening. "I'm sorry I couldn't do anything for Van, or you. Or Luke. I know now, and I know my responsibilities. I _will _do what I can to set things right. But there's nothing I can do for the dead of Hod, _my _people, or Luke, but avenge them."

Jade went down on one knee. "Peony knew nothing. He has done his best to give Hod's people justice…"

"He hasn't executed you."

"Then execute me." It was something that should have happened long ago. "But spare my Emperor. Too many innocent people have already died."

"Like you care? Oh." Gailardia finally figured it out. "So you do care about something. Even the Necromancer does, even though your reputation says that you shouldn't. And I came to care for a replica, even though I thought he was the son of a murderer. And now he's dead. So I won't execute you. Not until after your emperor is already dead. Or you can die in battle, knowing that you failed him."

"So I should take this as a declaration of war, your majesty," Jade said, some part of him feeling cold and empty in a manner different from the usual.

"War? Do you call what happened to Hod a war? To Akzeriuth?" Betrayal, slow deaths from miasma or data extraction, massacring, and finally ending it all? "Call it justice, call it a mercy kill. The fact remains that those who profited by twisting Yulia and Lorelei's words, the Score made to give the world prosperity, will die. In accordance with the Hidden Score, written on the seventh fonstone."

Tear looked shocked.

Was he giving too much away, or too little? Even now, there was some reluctance to reveal Scores of death. Was the entire world really that brainwashed? Was it just that wrong to want to save people's lives?

In this world it was, and Luke had died for it.

No more. Never again. He was still a little sore at Van for not telling him about Luke earlier, but Eldrant would rise, this corrupt world would fall, and the good people, people like Mary and Luke, wouldn't have to suffer anymore.

* * *

No one noticed any change in Asch when the core was overwritten. Something in him had broken long ago, and they'd thought he'd spend his last days staring at the wall, too pathetic for Gailardia to bother killing him. The mind that was subsumed by Lorelei's presence was too far gone to care, much less warn anyone, and Lorelei didn't tell him what he was up to.

It would have been cruel to give him hope when Lorelei didn't know if this would work, and if Asch had begun moving again, if there had been life in his eyes, Largo would have noticed. The Black Lion had started looking after the young man his daughter had loved after Van had stopped caring, just like Arietta after the original Ion died.

To give himself away by apologizing would have been to give up this last chance.

And what did apologies matter to the dead? There was no way to make up for killing people, or failing to save them.

Except saving them.


	7. Healing 1

_A 'what if' that has been in my documents folder for ages, too long to go in the 'for want of a nail' oneshot collection. Then I realized it didn't have to be a oneshot collection._

_So it's an old fic where the focus is on Van and Lorelei. No pairings, just family fluff and angst I suppose. Much more angst and suffering, since this is Auldrant we're talking about._

* * *

Van Grants had a moment of returned awareness, not even enough time to remember what was going on before he was Vandesdelca Musto Fende, trying to escape the doom he had been used to cause with his pregnant mother, and they were going to die. So he sang the song he had been taught as his mother bade him, the Grand Fonic Hymn that was meant to bring the aid of an uncaring Lorelei.

And as quickly as he'd become that child the flashback ended. Only it wasn't a flashback or nightmare. It was too real for that. It was what had happened exactly as he'd experienced it, knowing only what he had back then instead of having the horrible hindsight of the great irony of praying to the entity that condemned them all. He hadn't known it was in the Score then. His grandfather had told him, not wanting Van to blame himself any longer. Van still did, even though he knew who deserved the blame. The entity that had saved Yulia's descendants but no one else.

The vision, the memory has been real. This felt far less real. He felt nothing, the numbness associated with severed nerves. What had just happened?

Mystearica had come to attack him, yes. The replica Luke had tried to protect him and set off a hyperresonance. Van had kept Gailardia from interfering and they could create another replica if worst came to worst, but Tear? He'd known he should stay back, that he was needed, that he couldn't die before Eldrant rose, but that was his baby sister.

The only way to free her had been to replace her in the hyperresonance, and as he did so he felt a transport be caught in his knowledge of what hyperresonance did, shaped by it, twisted to destruction… and then he'd waken up.

He was being healed: he felt feeling return to his face and he was able to open his eyes. It was night and the replica was leaning over him, his eyes closed as he focused.

That was strange. He'd kept Luke from learning about the very concept of healing with artes, and how could the young and excitable Luke be so… not serene, but dedicated instead of panicking when they were in a strange place and Van was wounded? Very, very wounded, judging by the numbness.

Luke lifted his hands up, into Van's range of vision from where they had been over his chest. A golden glow that had to be hyperresonance faded as he did so, and then Luke's eyes opened. "Thank goodness." Luke didn't sound like that, the difference as dramatic as between the replica's voice and Asch's. The Luke with golden eyes sounded old, with an old and faded grief that had become his default in the way anger had Asch's and need had Luke's. "I am sorry to have used my power on your mind, child of Yulia, one who would seize glory, but if you had not sung our hymn I could not have stayed here and you would have perished."

"Lorelei." Lorelei had power over memory: he must have put Van into a situation where he had sung the hymn so that he would sing it again. "What are you doing here?"

"The light of the sacred flame inherited my power, and my power is my mind is myself. When this fragment of my soul felt what was happening to you he cried out in fear for your life, and as my perfect isofon his voice is my voice. But only if you sang the hymn could I stay." Lorelei gathered a hyperresonance in its hands again and returned to work.

"The hyperresonance damaged my body?" Van's blood ran cold. Hyperresonance damage could not be healed. Healing restored the body to its ideal state, and hyperresonance attacked the pattern that said what the body should be. A body that had an arm destroyed by hyperresonance now was 'supposed to' not have an arm, and all the healing artes in the world could not convince it otherwise.

But if Lorelei could make a memory come to life, then this would be child's play for the entity that was the Score.

"Exactly," Lorelei responded to Van's thoughts, and Van realized that of course the entity would know them even before he thought them. "If it were just a matter of healing I would not have needed you to sing the hymn so that I could remain. Healing only takes an instant. Making a new pattern… would, if it weren't for the pact. As it is, only my young scion's presence allows me to do something outside it. Thank goodness, if he hadn't…" Lorelei's eyes closed for a moment.

"But I do not know how much I can do. My presence here will gradually destroy Luke's mind, the flow of so much power will damage his replica body, and the use of so much power will also tire any human body. And if I leave while you are still like this Luke will attempt to heal you no matter what the cost, and then he will surely die."

"How much damage is there?"

"This hyperresonance was created of Luke's desire to drive the one who bears ancient sadness away so that she could not harm you and his own desire to escape the manor. Tear desired to kill you, but Luke's will overrode hers and it would have been merely a transport arte. Yet, when you entered the arte, her desire for your death combined with your own. If it were not for Luke's desire to save you, you would have died instantly. As it was… you did die, but your personality was not destroyed thanks to Luke's desire to protect you and keep you with him. Your body, however, was lost."

"All of it?"

"Everything. If it were not for my perfect isofon's love for you there would be nothing left of you to return to the fon belt."

Did Lorelei seriously think that this would cause Van to spare him? The fact that Lorelei was trying to guilt-trip Van into letting the replica live merely heightened his desire to kill the one who bore the name Luke fon Fabre. "One of your isofons' deaths is required by your own Score."

"I know. I have known for over two thousand years, oh one who would seize glory. As I knew that Yulia's child would be used to destroy his own home. It was only fitting that mine risk the same fate. I hoped that his presence might be enough to avert it, but how many ripples can a babe of only two years cause? A foolish hope indeed." Lorelei tried to smile at its own stupidity, but the small upward turn of Luke's lips did not reach those eyes. It touched Van's face then, and Van's eyes narrowed at the liberty.

"You have every right to hate and kill me, oh one who would seize glory. And you created this isofon, and he would follow you into the depths of hell and never hate you for it. Perhaps that is what I wanted you to know. You bear no guilt, Vandesdelca. All of this is my fault, and even if my isofon had naught to do with it neither of us will blame you for doing what you choose. It is… I am happy to see that after two thousand years you truly do have the power to choose, now. No matter what you do, you are Yulia's child, Auldrant's child, Asch's teacher, and Luke's creator."

Auldrant's child? That meant Lorelei's child. Van hated the very thought of that.

"I did not mean to… I am sorry." Lorelei removed the offending hand reluctantly. "I am truly sorry." It returned to work.

"You are healing me even though I intend to destroy you."

"Of course. I will heal anyone." Those eyes grew heavier. "That the Score will permit me. And I do not hate you, Vandesdelca. How could I? You have done nothing that deserves my hatred, and won't. Hod was not your fault, and you have every right to take vengeance."

More nerves sprang to life as Lorelei talked, it seemed to have started healing the pattern it had just restored now. Lorelei's hand now rested over Van's heart, and it seemed his clothing had indeed also been destroyed.

"I confess that I am divided. I both want to die and I want this world to live. But for either to happen the Score must be destroyed. That cannot happen without you. You are both my executioner, Vandesdelca, and my savior. If the Score is gone then I can return to the fonons I manifested from and die, either way." Lorelei's hand caressed Van's chest lightly. "Do you feel that?"

"Don't you already know?"

"Your memories are part of me, yes, but I can choose not to look since you don't want me to."

"Yes, I feel that." The area of sensation extended to the base of his rib cage and no farther. Van decided he perhaps didn't want to be able to look down, since he was very likely nothing but a disembodied torso.

With so little sensation to focus on Lorelei's touch was maddening as well as enraging. "I'm glad," he was told, and Lorelei's hand was removed as it returned to work on the next area. "I have been able to do so little for two thousand years. I'm glad that the second thing since the Score I am able to choose to do is to help you."

"What was the first?" How much freedom did Lorelei have? If it were unpredictable that could pose a problem.

"Permit this isofon's birth. I knew it was necessary, but memory made me hesitate. If I had allowed it right away the light of the sacred flame wouldn't have had to suffer as much. The last time… the last time the power I am an embodiment of manifested among humans was as myself. I knew that Luke was necessary to destroy the Score, and yet I couldn't stand even the possibility that he would be used for another Score. Thank you for keeping Mohs from realizing that possibility exists." Lorelei bent to kiss his forehead in benediction.

"How dare you?!" Van raged, wishing he could attack Lorelei.

"You're right, I should not have done that." Lorelei touched its lips. "It is just that… the feelings of my isofons affect me, and they both love you more than anything. And I have waited two thousand years for you, my only hope of death or redemption. If you wish to punish me yourself… I do not know if I can stay long enough for that. If it's any comfort, as a being of memory I suffer exactly as much as everyone bound by the Score does. And their memories don't exist before the painful destiny and vanish when they die. I have known the pain you would feel, I have felt it, for two thousand years. Just as vivid as what I showed you so that you would sing, I feel as you did while Hod crumbled and I know that it is my fault. Never yours, Vandesdelca. _Never_ yours."

As Van contemplated this Lorelei smiled. "Is it selfish of me to wish to ease your pain? Perhaps it is. Perhaps it's a sop to my own guilt, as unfair as it was that only Yulia's descendants were helped when Hod fell. I can do so little! I can only do this for you because Luke's actions are not governed by the Score. Otherwise I couldn't have done anything but watch, as I have for two thousand and seventeen long, long years, lived by millions of people."

"Are you trying to get me to feel pity for you? How pitiful."

Lorelei laughed. "Oh, I am, oh one who shall seize me. I am! If you wish I shall stay until this body falls apart: Luke would be willing to die so that you could have satisfaction, but as much as you tormented me the pain would be drowned in the anguish of millions! It would be a false penance, but how I crave it! How sickening, that the sentience of life and healing craves death and torment!" Lorelei laughed until it had to gasp for breath, clutching its chest. Luke's chest. "I should... hurry."

When the lower half of his torso was complete Lorelei sighed with relief. "You could survive with only this much, but I'll do as much more as I can."

Van dared raise his head to see the hyperresonance in Lorelei's hands gathering at the stump of his sword arm, gradually adding to it. Yes, the essential organs were all there, although it would be a hindrance to be unable to walk on his own.

At least Mystearica… "What happened to Mystearica?"

"Your addition to the hyperresonance caused some destruction to the manor, but your desire to protect your sister meant that she escaped unharmed. The Shining Guardian, however, was very lucky instinct drove him to put his arm between his body and the hyperresonance. If you were to sing the hymn in Luke's presence and his after Luke has had some time to recover I could repair the damage."

"That's a relief." He'd injured his lord… Van closed his eyes.

When feeling returned to his arm he was able to move it, form it into a fist. "Work on my legs next," he ordered. He could fight with only one arm.

"As you wish." Lorelei bent to the task, not pausing when Van touched its borrowed body as it knelt by his side. "Do as you wish," was its only response.

"Distracting you would mean less of me is healed." He wasn't that foolish. "I'll find some other way to have my vengeance. You care about Luke, don't you?"

"Yes. And Asch, and Mystearica. They along with you are the ones I have awaited, have hoped for." It pained Lorelei to admit it, but, "To hurt Luke would truly hurt me, you are right. The anguish it would cause him if his beloved teacher were to turn against him is something I would experience along with him, and the pain of knowing you were doing it solely because of me would hurt just as much."

"And you're telling me this."

"I owe you the truth, among so many other things. It is not right that an innocent suffer because of me, but what are you but an innocent who has suffered because of me? What are Tear and Asch and your parents and Sync and…" Lorelei shuddered. "It is wrong, it is wrong that I crave death, I am life, I must fight with everything in me for survival, I…" Cutting himself off, Lorelei focused everything on finishing Van's right leg and with a quick touch healed it.

On to the other, and Van realized that Lorelei's shoulders slumping wasn't just a sign of despair when the glow faltered for a moment. "No," Lorelei murmured to itself. "Not yet. Not yet."

"Can you return another time? You implied that you could, to heal Gailardia."

"Yes, but…" Lorelei had to put one arm on the ground to prop itself up, leaving only one to serve as fonon-gatherer and controller for the hyperresonance. "You are in Tataroo Valley, there are monsters here and you are technically inside Malkuth, although it isn't that far to Chesedonia. And all your weapons were destroyed, although Luke's are intact. I at least need to make sure that…" The single hand that now inscribed Van's body's new pattern trembled, just a bit. "That you can survive… Luke has sealed himself away to endure, as he does when I… And he's able to endure much, but his body is weak as of yet. I'm just exhausting it, I'll lose the battle with it to stay conscious before anything… permanent…happens." Lorelei yawned: Van's left leg was now complete down to the knee.

Van managed to sit up and grasped Lorelei. "Here. Will this let you work faster?"

"Yes, it was getting to be an effort to keep myself upright and do this." Lorelei leaned against Van gratefully, not caring about Van's nakedness. Of course, Lorelei wasn't human and if it was every memory, even intimate moments, it wasn't surprising it lacked shame. "I…" The lower leg seemed to be present, if still not quite right. When Lorelei couldn't focus enough to complete the statement, or perhaps the thought, Van realized that the respite granted by the support was only a temporary one.

Adrenaline could let humans do things that landed them with broken bones afterwards. How far could the fonon sentience that governed bodies and healing push a replica before they broke down?

Not much farther, it seemed, as the golden light flickered out and Lorelei, or perhaps Luke again, fell bonelessly unconscious in Van's arm.

The new limb was solid, if there wasn't any feeling to it and it seemed more like a model of a leg than a leg.

It moved, at least. He could flex his toes and so on. He'd seen worse prosthetics.

Not that he had any reason to feel grateful.


	8. Healing 2

He was able to fashion a serviceable outfit from Luke's pants and coat, leaving Luke clad in boxers that looked decent enough and his undershirt. Luke did not wake up all the way to Chesedonia, although he seemed reasonably healthy, just very much in need of the rest.

Gailardia was waiting for them in Chesedonia, or rather they arrived right after the ferry had arrived from Baticul: he'd been sent out as soon as they'd verified where the hyperresonance had gone.

"You lost an arm too?"

"I'm afraid so. What happened to Mystearica?"

"You mean the assassin? She escaped. Last I heard they were still looking for her."

"That's good. She's my sister."

"So that's why you got in the way." Guy went over to the bed where Luke still slept. "Hey, Luke, wake up." He shook him gently.

"He hasn't woken up since he was possessed by Lorelei."

"Possessed by Lorelei?" Van had to be kidding, but he wouldn't kid about something like that.

"I didn't just lose an arm. Luckily Lorelei was able to repair the rest before exhausting Luke's energy." There was no point worrying Gailardia with how close his liegeman had come to death.

"It didn't do anything to him, did it?"

"Why are you so concerned?"

"Well, we'll get in trouble if anything happens to him." Guy looked sheepish. "Everyone else was asleep, so I didn't really have any witnesses to back me up. They're going to want to interrogate you when we head back."

Van had expected that. "I don't know if it did anything to him or not. It manifested because of Luke's determination to protect me during the hyperresonance, and then manipulated my memories so that I sang the Grand Fonic Hymn. It compels Lorelei to aid Yulia's descendants, and this let it remain in control of Luke's body after the hyperresonance ended. It said that its presence might damage him in several ways."

"Damn it." Guy shook his head.

"Guy…"

"I know, I know Van. He's Duke Fabre's son. Or I guess that he _was_ Duke Fabre's son. Since he came back he's been like a different person. You know who it was that taught him to walk and talk. His father practically ignored him. A lot of the time it feels like he's my son, not that murderer's. I know who Luke loves more, for one thing. The Luke that was kidnapped was the future monarch of Kimlasca, determined to make his father proud." Guy showed the proper attitude… towards Asch. "My Luke… If it wouldn't get you in trouble I'd kidnap him myself. He'd love to get out of the manor." At least Guy realized how unrealistic that way.

"I understand how you could get attached to him."

"Me to him? More like the other way around. If he had to choose between us and his 'real' family, he'd choose us in a heartbeat. I wouldn't ask him to, but sometimes I wonder if he would kill Duke Fabre for me." Guy smiled, an avenger's smile. "If I told him what his father did to my family, if I approached it the right way… he would avenge them for me, I think."

"He might." Luke was loyal… to them, and easy to manipulate. Not to mention that there was a lot of suppressed anger at Duke Fabre and the rest of the household for how Luke was treated. "He might indeed, to make things right between you."

"He's still just a kid inside, though. We adults can handle our own problems." Guy sat down on the edge of Luke's bed and shook him a bit. "He's really not waking up."

"I could try singing the Grand Fonic Hymn. It might or might not work, since Luke is asleep."

"Is there any reason it might be a bad idea to try?"

"I don't think so."

"Then go ahead."

They both could tell the difference, the way Luke's unguarded sleeping face was changed to one that held great sadness. It seemed to be an effort for Lorelei to open its borrowed eyes. Once it managed, it saw Guy leaning over him with his eyes narrowed. "Dr. Gardios?"

"What… Who?" Guy was Count Gardios, but Luke didn't know that. Of course Lorelei would.

"Oh… my apologies, Shining Guardian. I got… mixed up. You look a great deal like your ancestor. He was one of my few friends and he was generally the one that tended to the wounded until Julia created the fourth fonic hymn. Either he or Dr. Ella… But you don't look very much like her." Lorelei's eyes closed. "I have spent very little time incarnate indeed," he murmured.

"Can you heal us?" That was what Van cared about.

"I'm afraid not. This fragment of my soul's strength is still exhausted, as is my own. Between the Score, the need to hold back the miasma, and my true duties very little of my power is unspoken for. It was more Luke's power than anything that healed you, I simply provided the knowledge and the control." If it weren't for the fact Lorelei still spoke they would have thought Luke was asleep. "I can speed his recovery, at least. He is strangely resilient: a credit to your work and the light of the sacred flame's strength, oh one who would seize glory. My presence should not cause his fonons to disperse as it would a normal replica's."

"Replica?!" Guy stared at him, then at Van.

"You didn't… Oh, yes, you didn't know. I should have checked instead of thinking that your kindness to him was a sign that you did." Lorelei sounded very tired now, and not in the physical sense. "I have never been incarnate among those who knew my nature, and my thoughts are clouded."

"Is Lorelei telling the truth?"

He couldn't lie to his lord. "Yes. Luke was replaced by a replica during the kidnapping. You weren't told because you would have treated the replica differently and they might have been suspicious." Instead Guy had started to treat Luke differently in any case.

"I should have known he wasn't the same brat." Guy sighed. "So you're saving the real one for Akzeriuth while your replica gains their trust? Good idea."

Not exactly… but that would have to do for now.

Lorelei chuckled quietly. "Not Dr. Gardios indeed. Although he was a fontech researcher. I think you two would have gotten along very well." Real affection there. "You are far more open about your kindness than he was."

"You were really… You knew humans? During the Dawn Age?"

"Yes, I took human form to try to stop the war. At first I joined those who were trying to prevent humanity from taking control of the future, but as the war raged on and the miasma grew I had to accept that only if the future were already controlled would they give up and stop fighting. So I chose Julia, who was on the side of our enemies, albeit reluctantly. Dr. Gardios and Mal Fende never really were certain that I wouldn't betray them, although I was honest when I said that I had defected to preserve Auldrant… Dr. Gardios didn't suspect my nature, but he knew that my knowledge pushed the borders of what I should have been able to figure out. After all, he was in the same field. I think Mal was mostly just jealous, by the end." It seemed these were precious people, treasured memories, to Lorelei. "Of course, he had no need to be jealous. We had to have a bond between us to create the pact, but she could not love a spirit in her sword, a man who had lied to her all along."

"This is my ancestor you speak of?"

Lorelei paused. "Essentially."

"And 'essentially' is different from 'yes' how?"

"I will tell you if you truly wish to know, but I doubt that you do. The knowledge would not aid you in any way."

Something Lorelei didn't want him to know? When it had been so open about admitting that torturing Luke would hurt it? "Tell me."

"As you wish. For the pact to be created, our hearts and wills had to be as one. We did love each other, although there was no way we could be together or have the love that two humans share. But she did not know that. If she had known what I was then I would have been something to be studied, not a partner or a friend, and the pact would have been impossible. I told her that we could never be together, I told her that Fende loved her and she knew that, but she decided that if she now possessed the power to write the future, then she would write one in which I could remain at her side."

And she'd gotten that, both the listeners knew: Lorelei's spirit had inhabited the Key of Lorelei, her sword and shield. "But even as she killed me and wished that she did not know that Lorelei was her companion. I had changed my form because I did not want her to know she had killed me. Better to think I was lost to the monsters there. Asch and Luke are replicas of the form I wore then, when she defeated me."

"Asch?"

"That's what the original Luke calls himself now. The ashes of the sacred flame."

"So he was born naturally and he's still a replica?" Guy didn't know about the research on Hod, thankfully, but he knew about the field in general.

"No human would possess my fonon frequency or be able to hold my power naturally. I brought him about, as the Score dictated. If she had carried a normal child the Noble Lily," both Van and Guy knew enough Ancient Ispanian to know that was Lady Suzanne, "would have perished, even with the use of Daathic fonic artes to remedy the infertility her illness caused. Yulia ordained that I would cause his birth, so that a power capable of breaking the Score would exist in this time and Auldrant would have a hope of survival. She also… She also wished that we would have a child. That was all she wanted, peace and prosperity, freedom and love. That was all. I chose well, but… I could not give her what she wanted. This world could not. So I created a child for her, one that looked like her but was made of my power. And broken-hearted she realized that Mal loved her truly, so… But she realized who I was when the pact was completed. I hadn't wanted her to know. I am the spirit of memory and I couldn't keep her from realizing… The Score had to be absolute, it had to be something even we couldn't break or the war would have continued, but she had wanted to find her love who had vanished into the Abyss, and so she knew once it was too late."

Love, and sadness, terrible ancient love and two thousand years of mourning. "The Score couldn't permit dangers to it, but Yulia wanted our descendants to live on. For two thousand years, for two thousand years there have never been more than five alive at any time. Yet never less than two. She thought the word 'children' after all, not child." A smile now. "I had free will, I had the free will to give your mother a choice, because the Score made sure I didn't have the power to repair the damage to both of them. But she chose her daughter, and Tear lived just as the Score predicted. It was only two years, only two years since the light of the sacred flame's birth. Not long enough for a baby to make enough ripples to matter. I shouldn't have given up hope then, but I think my hope died a long time ago.

"Part of me… Of course, I am nothing but a part of me. A manifestation. Much of me wants to smother this child, do you realize that? Partly because I don't want him to have to live in this world and go through what he's going to go through, no, what he may go through, I have to believe that! But… it's partially because I want to live. I want to live and help you, my child, Galahad's child, I want you to live and I… I have become the monster you hate."

"Don't even think about it!" Guy's sword was out and held to Luke's neck. "If you possess him, if you destroy him, I'll kill you before you get a chance to do anything!"

"I know, I know, oh shining guardian who has chosen to become a just man. Cecil: blind one, as justice is blind, not caring about the surface. Thank you." Lorelei's eyes opened now. "Thank you for listening. I have been able to speak to no one, not even my kin, except for giving this poor child headaches in far too long. I think I am mad, but then I am this world and this world is mad. I will go, if you wish, although Luke will not wake up until he has the power to heal you. He refuses."

"I don't believe you." The sword was not removed.

"He won't wake up for me, but perhaps he would for you two, you are right. He is your child more than mine, oh one who would seize glory. I will leave and you may call him. Although…" Lorelei hesitated. "I will go." The battle against temptation was won. For now.

Golden eyes closed and Guy started shaking him one-armed. "Luke? Luke! Wake up! Do you hear me, Luke?!" Guy gave Van a look, clearly asking why on Auldrant Van wasn't calling as well, so Van gave in.


	9. Heaing 3

"Luke? I know you're tired, but please. We're worried about you." Luke wouldn't want them to worry, and Van's false consideration would make it worse. "I know you can do it, Luke." And Luke would rather die than let him down.

Little twitches, slight struggles to move, a young heart fighting a body determined to rest despite its idiot mind's attempts to get them both killed by exhausting it the way Lorelei had. "Luke, come on," Guy coaxed, trying to smile his usual falsely carefree grin. "You've been asleep for over a week. Don't think you can get away with five more minutes."

A small noise of complaint, although it was directed at Luke's own exhaustion instead of at Guy. His mouth opened and on the second try he was able to speak instead of yawn. "I can't open my eyes."

Guy's own narrowed and he pried one of Luke's eyelids open. They were green, just very, very tired, too tired to even really focus on their faces. As soon as Guy let it go it closed again. "Sorry, Luke, just checking."

"You're both alive?"

"Yes, Luke, we are, thanks to you."

"Are you sure, Master Van? I felt you die." A childish fear in that voice, like Tear wanting to be told it was only a nightmare. A child's fear of losing their parents. One of Luke's hands clawed a bit at the blankets, wanting the leverage to sit up but unable to force his body to obey. "Where are you?" I can't see you.

Van came around the bed's other side, ignoring the impulse to displace Gailardia. He was already attached to Van's sacrificial offering, and might be becoming suspicious. "Here, Luke." He touched Luke's face, Lorelei's child's face, with a mimic of the same tenderness Lorelei had dared touch his with.

Only while he had tried to draw back Luke found the strength to tilt his head closer. "Master Van." He sighed with relief. "Thank goodness."

"We're glad you're safe too, Luke. You really had me worried there." Gailardia took his hand instead.

"I don't know if I am. I'm so tired, and there was something," Luke stopped.

"What was it, Luke?"

"It sounds silly." And Luke didn't want to sound silly in front of Master Van.

"You know you can tell me anything, and I think I know what you're talking about."

That was such a relief. "There was something when I was scared for you. I called for help, and then there was something big, huge, and I thought I would be smothered. But it said it was the only way to save you, so I did. I think it was the same voice I hear during my headaches. Was it real?" Or had Luke gone mad?

"It was real, Luke. That was Lorelei, and if you hadn't called it I would have died. You did save my life, so don't worry. I'm sorry I told you not to listen to the voices. I thought they might be related to what caused your amnesia and that listening to them would make your chances of getting your memories back worse. I didn't want you to think they were a sign you were going mad, but we know for sure that they're not now. That's a relief." Van raised that hand to Luke's hair. Strange that Luke and Asch had both chosen the exact same hairstyle, even if their clothing was different. Was this how Lorelei's hair had looked when Yulia killed it?

"Lorelei?" Luke had to think. "Order of Lorelei Lorelei?" He yawned, his head shifting against Van's head a bit like a kitten wanting to be pet. "He's scary. But he did save Master Van." So he was okay.

"Did he scare you?" Guy was already angry: if his other arm was intact he would be caressing his sword hilt.

"I don't think he meant to. Just…" Luke didn't have a lot of experience to draw metaphors from. "Like he was Pere and I was a little blade of grass. I wasn't a weed, but I wasn't as important right then as the flower he was tending and I would be crushed if he stepped on me. And I couldn't run away without pulling out my roots and dying. So I curled up tight and hid until I heard you and knew it was safe." From the way his neck arched just a bit to rub against Van's hand the one who made him feel safe was clearly his master instead of his bodyguard, who sadly actually cared for him.

Something Lorelei had allowed Van to create against Lorelei's own wishes. Something whose pain would hurt Lorelei yet, it seemed, far less than Van's itself did. "That was good thinking, Luke." He rubbed the boy's scalp a bit and saw that tiny blush that always greeted praise. "You did well."

Luke was so very, very easy to make happy. "Thank you, Master Van." Like this, he couldn't manage to make even his usual token effort to hide his utter adoration.

"Guy and are still injured, Luke, but don't try to call him back just yet. Gather your strength, and let me know right away if you feel anything from him."

"You're still injured?" No…

"It's not your fault, Luke. I was so worried about what might happen to you that the hyperresonance was influenced by it. I wanted to save you even if it cost me my own life, and what should have just transported you and my sister away safely was turned into a destructive hyperresonance by my own fear. It was my fault, not yours, Luke. You didn't understand anything about how this power worked and you still saved my life. I'm very proud of you." Van rubbed the boy's head and marveled. He knew how often Luke received physical affection, between a distant father and a sick mother who believed Luke when he claimed he was too old for hugs, but the reaction! The young replica was putty in his hands. Not that he hadn't been already. "Lorelei exhausted you, Luke. I don't want anything to happen to you because of that creature and my own weakness."

"I'll be careful, Master Van." Luke couldn't let Master Van blame himself! "Please don't worry," he said, then yawned again.

Van smiled, although Gailardia was the only one to see it. "It's too late for that. My sister trying to kill me places you in so much danger, Lorelei, the creator of the Score, possesses you twice for my sake and exhausts you like this… I'll be worrying until you're home safe and sound."

"Don't worry, I'll be fine." He had Master Van here with him: of course he would be. "I'm sorry I've been so much trouble."

"It's not your fault, Luke. Didn't you hear Van tell you that?" Guy at first was surprised by Luke's apology, but then he realized that Luke had always been willing to let Van past the defensive shell. And what was behind it was a child, a child that Van had created. Luke couldn't know it, but Van had all along. No wonder they'd developed such a bond. He'd been worried that Van was getting too attached the same way Van worried about his lord.

"I know, but…"

"Luke, you know better than to argue with your teacher." A student had to obey their teacher in all things… in the practice ring. "Now go to sleep."

"I don't think I can," Luke confessed. "But I'll try to rest."

"Why not?" Guy squeezed Luke's hand, a liberty he wouldn't have dared before.

"It's… It's stupid. I'll be fine." Luke's blush had receded a bit but now it returned full force. "I'm not a little kid."

"Luke, tell me what's bothering you."

Luke would never refuse him. "I had nightmares. It was fine when you were there, but I don't think I can fall asleep. I kept seeing you fall apart right in front of me, and… I don't think I can fall asleep if I keep seeing that, and even if I do I won't stay asleep for very long."

"I have an arte that could put you to sleep, but it's called nightmare for good reason." The first of Yulia's fonic hymns would be risky to cast in addition to that. "It will be some time until the ferry sails. I'll stay with you until then, Guy can make the arrangements." That would give Van some time to think about how exactly he would approach Lorelei's awkward revelation. Gailardia was serious about his family duty. If he decided that Luke was Van's child, as well as perhaps related through Lorelei, that would allow Gailardia to discard his duty to hate Luke and admit his affection for the replica to himself. He would have a very, very hard time getting anything past Guy after that.

If Luke was stable then Asch was unnecessary. Asch was Duke Fabre's true son, Luke was far easier to control, and someone had to die at Akzeriuth, for his plan and for Gailardia's vengeance.

And yet Van had allowed himself to grow somewhat attached to Asch. Asch was the chosen one, the one who would destroy this corrupt world. And once that was done, Vandesdelca could finally die and escape the guilt of what he had done.

Perhaps it was somewhat similar to the way Lorelei felt about him.

"You don't have to." Luke's voice was small.

"It's my fault you're so tired. And the sooner you rest up the sooner it will be safe for you to call Lorelei, since I know you're going to insist on helping Guy and I recover. This is my duty to you as my student, Luke." It's not being a burden: you have a right to this consideration.

"Thank you." Luke's voice was even quieter now, touched and wanting to hide how much. But the shyness screamed it even louder than his usual false dismissal.

After Guy was shooed away to make arrangements Van reviewed the situation. The god-generals would be on the Rugnica Plains capturing Ion and using him to open the Sephiroth, as well as halting the futile peace effort. Everything was still going according to plan. But did he want to change that plan? Especially since all these doubts had come about because of words spoken by Lorelei, of all entities?

He'd thought that Lorelei didn't care about this world's suffering. It could all be a vast act of reverse psychology, but from Van's understanding of the seventh fonon it was not only plausible but inevitable.

It wasn't just the Score. He'd known that all along. It was those that worked to bring it about, it was the humans who did things like use their grandchildren the way Teodoro had used him.

If Lorelei was a victim, if Lorelei suffered as Van did, then Eldrant would grant Lorelei's wish. However, if Lorelei was a liar, then Van no longer working towards Eldrant would be what it wanted, out of a selfish desire to survive, and Van also needed to pursue his goals.

Whether Lorelei was a fellow sufferer or not, Van would bring about Eldrant. What did it matter of Lorelei was his ancestor? So were Yulia and Teodoro.

But Mystearica, Gailardia… they were his family. He'd promised them, and himself, to look after them. And now Mystearica wanted to kill him because she'd discovered who knew what, and Gailardia would not permit Van to kill a child that he had created. Their enemy was one thing. A lord was responsible for his vassals. Guy would not let Van discard his honor that way, not knowing that Van had already lost all right to be considered honorable when Hod perished.

This world… this world would not even permit his parents to live. It would not even permit his new family to be together. It used children and used them up all according to the will of the Score. Van, the real Ion, the real Luke… No more, he'd wanted to make it stop with Ion. Asch would not die. He would not.

So Luke had to perish so that the world would let the Score lead it into a war, a war that would use up the resources it could have used to prevent Eldrant's rise.

In the end, all this changed nothing, did it.

Knowledge simply made everything more painful.

Carrying the burden of Hod, carrying the burden of all the world's sins… the Score said that Luke would destroy himself as well as the city. Commit suicide, or fall into the miasma with it.

Van didn't want that. He was already replacing Asch with a replica, he could pervert the Score a little further. No one would have to know that Luke had been put out of his misery before he understood the horror of what had happened.

"You're sad," Luke murmured. "Is it Lorelei's fault?"

"I thought you were asleep."

"I was, but you're sad. And something is coming. Not Lorelei, even smaller than I am. But angry. They're shouting and I can't sleep."

Asch?! "Smaller than you?"

"Um… maybe quieter? There's less there to make noise. I think it was too quiet to hear before I knew how to listen, even though I couldn't help hearing Lorelei." Even though Luke had tried not to. "If Lorelei is Pere, and I'm a blade of grass… Um… maybe an ant? Or… It's like the difference between a real flower and one made out of silk. It looks right but it's not alive. Only a silk flower lasts longer and this one is fading away… A dead blade of grass, getting burned up?" He couldn't think of the right way to say it, and it was irritating. "Partially like us, but mostly stuff that isn't made to look like us. And the fake parts can't sing for real, they just sound like they can. You're a bit alike, in that part of you can sing but most can't, only you're not fake. Most people are rocks, that don't look alive and can't sing either?" Did Van know what Luke was talking about?

"I think you're talking about normal people versus seventh fonists." Van pet Luke's hair again to calm him. "I'll explain about that once you've rested up. How close is the person you're hearing?"

"Close. I couldn't make them out when they were far away. They're closer than Guy is, and coming here." Luke knew he didn't need to worry with Master Van here, but he still was worried. "Do they work for Lorelei?"

"No." Perish the thought.

"I told Lorelei that I would do anything to help you, and Lorelei said that I could do whatever I wanted with my life and could decide for myself. And I said that I did decide, and so he had better fix you. Lorelei was sad then, and I think he decided to protect someone and couldn't. The person that's coming… They can't decide for some reason. Master Van can, and Guy can, and I can, and so why not them?"

"He doesn't have free will?"

"Free will?"

"The ability to decide what he wants to try to do. What it's called when one's actions aren't predetermined."

"He could have that, but he doesn't."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't want it."

"How could someone not want free will?" Asch?

"Because he's angry. I don't know why either. There are… I don't know why Lorelei thinks it's so special." Luke yawned. "I don't know why he doesn't like me, either. I don't think I can stay awake much longer. I can't sleep, but I can't stay awake when he's trying to tie up everything. It's tiring to burn through them. I'm sorry."

Van could see Luke's body switch from asleep in all but mind to unconscious.

Tie up? Luke's existence was outside the Score.

Someone with the power of Lorelei whose actions were outside the Score's control.

But that didn't make sense. Lorelei had said that the changes to fate should have started with the original Luke's birth. The one who inherited the power of Lorelei, the one Yulia had ordered Lorelei to create.

There was some piece of the puzzle that was hovering out of reach, that had not yet fallen into place. Lorelei would know, Lorelei would be forced to tell him.

Before Van finished the third hymn Asch burst in. "Stop it, damn you! Stop!" Sync followed closely, carrying a disheveled Ion. Yes, they could pass through Chesedonia on the way to the Zao Ruins, but what had Asch so upset? "What do you think you're doing? Wasn't giving that replica my name and identity enough? Why did you take me in the first place instead of letting me go home if you were going to give it my power too?!"

The light of the sacred flame. The ashes of the sacred flame.

Van had changed the original Luke's name to that, the one who would bring all to ash and ruin, the one who would end this world and douse Lorelei's light.

The power that Asch had been born with, the true power of Lorelei, had passed to Luke. Luke was not only an isofon, but as a being of the seventh fonon alone he was a manifestation. A power that could not challenge Lorelei, but disrupt it, divert it. The light of hope.

One would die at Akzeriuth. This world's hope or this world's death. Asch's very presence was antithetical to Luke, the small fire smothered beneath ashes.


	10. Healing 4

"What happened to your arm?!" That was what grabbed Sync's attention.

"I got caught in a hyperresonance. It appears the stories about the Grand Fonic Hymn forcing Lorelei to come to the aid of Yulia's descendants are accurate: it's already healed the rest of the damage. Lorelei seems to find the replica a useful vessel, although its presence has drained him." Luke was clearly dead to the world. "Did Lorelei do something to you, Asch?"

"It drained my power. I haven't been able to cast a single fonic arte for weeks now: my fon slots are almost burned out from sending all the fonons they gather to that replica."

"Perhaps to restore the replica's reserves for the rest of the healing." Van was still irritated, and exaggerated the reaction to convey to Asch that this was certainly not Van's doing. "If I complete the hymn, we should be able to question Lorelei."

"Really?!" Then why weren't they doing it, Sync wanted to know. He wanted to get his hands on Lorelei!

"Sync." Van's eyes narrowed. "Don't damage the replica. We need it. The only way to harm Lorelei is the one we already have decided upon."

Sync grumbled. The chosen Ion replica looked worried for Luke anyway.

"Go ahead then." Asch wasn't happy about the idea, since he thought that it might be Lorelei's presence that was weakening him, but if that was the only to get answers then so be it.

This time there was a different audience when Luke's slightly worried sleeping face became a tired one. "He woke up for you." Lorelei was glad, sounding fond of Luke. "Light of the sacred flame, Asch, I am sorry for making use of your power. You are far better at gathering it than my other precious isofon is, and I was already exhausting him by using his body to control both your powers. I had nothing but my knowledge to bring to Vandesdelca's aid."

"Well, stop it, then!"

Lorelei sighed. "I pushed the child too far. It was at his insistence, but his own words were," and it was the memory of Luke's voice that came from Lorelei's mouth next. "I don't care what happens to me! Save Master Van!" Lorelei again, continuing to quote the conversation: "Fragment of my soul, do not be so rash. You have a choice, do you understand what that means, how precious it is? Think carefully on what you wish to do with your life." The echo of longing in Lorelei's voice, the longing they all felt. And yet innocent Luke who knew almost nothing of the Score and perhaps wouldn't care even if he did answered, "No, I don't have a choice! Letting Master Van die, you call that a choice?!"

Hearing that only seemed to make Asch angrier. "And what does that have to do with me?"

"Without your strength my other perfect isofon will die, oh light of the sacred flame. I cannot aid him enough unless I remain in his body, and that is not safe for him. I know that his death is intended by all of you, but… do you not wish him to live a little longer? You determined a fate for him and it is not to die here. Just long enough that his teacher and friend may be well? It will be done soon, certainly before you travel to the city. It is his one wish." His last request?

"You're really Lorelei?" Ion dared to ask.

"Yes. I'm sorry I cannot help you. The Score binds me, but please believe that you have the power to help yourself. You and your brethren are outside the Score. If you wish to change fate, that power rests in your own hands. Please do not forget that you have hope, and they cannot take it away from you unless they take your lives. Please, live." Lorelei curled up, just a fraction. "In fact, I am far more a danger to you than a help. It is the Score's dictate that it must control all that forces me to try to regain control of your fonons, even if only passively. It is not my will that does this, I am… The Score is written into me at as basic a level as a human's heartbeat. I am sorry, child."

"If you can't help it, it's not your fault." Ion smiled, that replica's usual smile.

"It is my duty and purpose to help. Regardless of fault, your life is my responsibility." Lorelei, however, clearly felt that it was at fault. "Oh light of the sacred flame…"

"Don't call me that."

"Forgive me, Asch. Please, I beg of you. Will this child not die for your sake, in your place? Has this child not lived for your sake, in your place? Was he not created for your sake? In all of his existence he has had nothing that was his own, not even his own name. All he has known has been lies and deceptions, knowing and unknowing. I cannot tell him the truth. It would break his heart. If he is going to die, if you will not spare him, then please. For all he has suffered for your sake…"

"Shut up! How dare you say that replica is the one suffering?!" One-handed, Van was unable to intercept Asch's fist. Although, would he have wanted to?

"Because I feel the pain that the both of you feel, and his is greater." Lorelei didn't back down or even seem fazed by the blow. "You are surrounded by those who know you and value you for who or what you are. He has been surrounded, all his life, by those who do not love him, but you. They believe that you are hiding inside him from the pain of your memories. They believe that he is a coward who refuses to face his fears and return their loved one to them. They see him as a shell they must break through to reach you, and for seven years they have tried their hardest to break him. They have succeeded, many times. But there is nothing there to be revealed, you are not there, and so he has gathered the pieces and gone on, all the while hating himself for what he thinks is his own failure, his own fault. For if he were brave, if he loved them enough to return to them no matter what, then he would wake up and be you. Or so he believes. But you did not return to them either, did you? You are not the person they think is trying to return to them. Perhaps you are right to think that the real Luke fon Fabre died under that machine. The two of you were torn apart then, after all."

"Ah, so I was right. Explain this, Lorelei. You kept dropping hints in passing. What is the true nature of the light of the sacred flame?" Van's hand tightened in that hair.

"You didn't know all along?" Lorelei sounded small and lost. "I suppose even Yulia's children simply follow the Score in these times. I knew that you didn't, but then my true self, the seventh fonon, knows everything and this manifestation can only hold pieces of it. May I look to see what you do know?"

"I think that would be a good idea." Van hated it, but he hated not knowing more.

"Yes." Lorelei took a deep breath. "When the world attempted to gain control of the fonon and the war doomed it, enough of the fonon was gathered together and formed into a mind in harmony with the frequency of the fonon. That is what a fonon sentience is, and that one was myself. I was created as the vessel of this world's will to survive. Perhaps an analogy would be when a poisoned seventh fonist casts an arte on themselves to destroy the poison. But the poison was the desire for prosperity, power, and finally peace. To 'cure' it would have been almost worse than the disease. I could not get them to stop fighting, and eventually they themselves realized that the war would kill them all, but they were so afraid of the others seizing control of the fonon and using it to enslave them that they could not stop fighting. So they prayed for peace but would not make it themselves, and so they began to coerce the fonon into bringing about _eternal_ peace. In order to destroy that future, a future of survival had to be written, one that it was pointless to fight so they would have no choice but to give up and start working towards survival by their own hands instead.

"Yulia possessed a kind heart and a deep belief that human choice should be guarded. So I chose her. That is why the Score has the shape it has, that it comes true in the end but people still have the power to choose to fight it. If another had shaped it then the Score would work by removing the power to choose instead of creating prophecies that predict those choices. A Score that removed free will would have caused you to willingly destroy Hod, Vandesdelca. Instead, this one predicted that you would because of what the others would do knowing that prediction. A balance between a future that cannot be fought and the freedom of the human heart is a harsh one, because it leaves you the freedom to struggle against that future even though it will only break your hearts.

"But then, all life is the struggle against inevitable death. Every breath drawn is a victory. The Score renders that victory meaningless. Life is guaranteed and destiny cannot be fought, instead of possible deaths being averted every day by things as small as eating fruit. Since life ends with death, the world's Score had to include the world's Score of death. But as Yulia's Score itself was created at the last minute to avert the world's death, she ordained that Lorelei would manifest again to avert the Score. But the Score's very nature rendered that almost impossible. With the fonon so tightly controlled in order to sustain the sephiroth and hold the miasma back there would simply be no potential for a clump to form like I did. The power would be needed and ordered elsewhere. So you were born, a seventh fonist with the frequency of the fonon itself, Asch. The light of the sacred flame, the light of hope, the one who inherits the power of Lorelei, the one who shall lead to _new_ prosperity.

"You contain within you seventh fonons, as all seventh fonists do. Not enough to have a mind of their own, but as they are part of _your _mind you are both human and a fonon sentience. That is why you possess the power of hyperresonance. This child was created from seventh fonons taken from within you, seventh fonons to which enough were added that he could have a mind of his own. Luke is a fonon sentience created not by Auldrant itself but by a human."

"So he's your replica?" Asch was trying to figure out what to think about this.

"No. We are aspects of the same fonon, but replicas and originals are completely different people even though they have the same form. Just like identical twins. The difference between us is more like the difference between you as Luke and you as Asch, perhaps. The same soul, but very different selves and goals."

Sync laughed. "Don't you get it, Asch? You're the replica! You're Lorelei's replacement! No, not even that, you're just a tool with a weak version of his powers the way that one is!" Sync gestured at the current Ion replica.

"Please don't say that!" Lorelei protested. "His life has value, just as yours does. Please, don't hold yourself in contempt!"

Asch's life had value… as Sync's did. Asch was only as valuable as a replica. A 'failed' replica. Van knew Lorelei didn't mean it that way, but the words were doomed to enrage him.

"You wish to destroy the Score, correct? For the pain its existence has caused you? As do all your friends? They yearn to be free of it, child, and you already are. You say you have gained nothing since your birth, and yet, even if you will not retract that statement, you gained something with your birth: a precious gift that they would destroy this world to attain."

"And if I have free will and Asch doesn't, does mean my life has even _more_ value than his?" Van, who had known the original Ion well, could guess what expression Sync had behind that mask.

Lorelei just sighed. Utter failure to get the point on Sync's part, yes, and yet it seemed there was more. If Lorelei had tried to stop a war and failed… It seemed the creature was tired of talking and failing to be heard, tired of useless struggles, tired of wanting so desperately to help and being unable to. "All living beings are alive. Perhaps that is not the way humans see it. No, I know it isn't the way they do. But it's the way it is. The Score will almost certainly be averted by Luke's death, as this world's previous destiny was averted by mine. I know that what matters is the nature of that death, but by my nature as the Score I am prevented from knowing the nature of the details."

The question was why Van would possibly want to avoid the world's Scored death. Even if his hatred of Lorelei were to diminish, his hatred of the Score would remain. Lorelei might think there was another way, but Lorelei had thought the Score was a valid option. The creature was as delusional as its isofons.

The isofons Van held in the palm of his hand.


End file.
